Any Chance Collision
by elanurel
Summary: Georgetown was the next step in the plan but, if life could spin on a dime, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria. Adult content. COMPLETE
1. The time I like is the rush hour

**Any Chance Collision  
**

Georgetown was the next step in the plan but her daddy was always telling her that life could turn on a dime. If the trick was learning how to dance, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria.

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**Disclaimer:** The Winchester boys aren't mine but I'd make Dean wear his boots all the time if they were. 

**Overall Rating**: M (Language, Angst, Sex)

**Overall Pairings**: Dean/OFC (HET)

**Author's Notes**: This is a remix of _Always Falling_, resulting from a conversation with **katelennon**. I had no intention of writing a remix but she asked so many insightful questions about the other half of the story, my muse decided to answer them - but it took a little while for my brain to catch up and tell it properly. This is for you, Kate. mwah

**Miscellaneous**: The story is set in an AU where there are no demons, Mary is very much alive and Dean is a sophomore in college. And one wee little note about the posting schedule... I hope to post a section each week (there are a total of four sections planned) but life happens when you're busy making other plans. I will, however, be working solely on this story until it is finished - which is the only promise I can presently offer.

**Betas: ****embroiderama** has been on board since the inception of this story (and I mean that literally - she was one of the betas for _Always Falling_) and I will simply say this: she had the guts to call me when the characters weren't acting true to themselves because she loves them as much as I do and that is the best gift one can be given. **annebelleca** did her best to wrangle my overall wordiness and insane attachments to participles into much cleaner prose. **quirkies** made me feel like I had my own personal cheerleader while providing commentary on plot and characterization. **ysbail**, as always, provided insight into the characterization of our illustrious heroine. The good parts are all them. The mistakes? Those are all me.

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_**Part One: The time I like is the rush hour**_

_"I'm not the kind of girl who walks into a room and gets noticed, so when someone – "_

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"We couldn't save the baby."

It was a brisk voice that she didn't recognize, its antiseptic tang making her stomach twist in on itself; a doctor's voice, weary and blood-stained, accompanied by the unsteady rhythm of machines. A tattered breath, shattered glass in her lungs, bubbled thick around her mouth and someone was wiping her lips gently – someone who smelled like talcum powder, the sweet perfume of a nurse.

Her belly was on fire, the pain blossoming through her chest when she heard his intake of breath; one sharp draw taking in the stitches across her abdomen, nothing more than dead weight sinking into the lumpy mattress. There was one sob so ragged that it should have left scars – just one – before the hand around her own tightened, rough calluses against her palm as the scents of oak and pine fought with sterile ammonia and a rusty tang that no amount of disinfectant could mask.

_Dean._

She hadn't told him about the baby.

It was supposed to be a surprise, a split second of normal – the last thing she remembered with any clarity before the thunder roared through her. He would have laughed and called her a dork but that wouldn't have kept him from smiling when he opened up the Father's Day card, cracking a joke about how the kid was going to inherit his musical taste because there was no way in hell he was letting her loose with a music collection that sucked ass.

" Charlotte," he whispered but she didn't answer. She was too tired to open her eyes, couldn't even squeeze his hand to let him know that she had heard him – couldn't even tell him that his voice was the chain that kept her from floating out of herself when she soared backwards, hitting the ground with a crack from a nightmare, and all she wanted to do was glide into the black so that the ache spreading through her chest would stop.

But his hands had pressed down on hers, held her spilling heart inside, amidst the screams and the lights and the rush in her veins that kept getting softer every time she tried to move her lungs.

_Just hang on._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Her daddy always said that being late was right on time.

That might have worked for Aaron Webb.

People waited for him every day, long lines of screaming fans outside of his shows and record company executives who didn't want to rush his genius. There was even a groupie who used to wait for him by the mailbox at home, staying as far away as the restraining order required; she would just stare at them on their porch swing as Charlotte curled up underneath his arm and Daddy played the mandolin, crooning old folk songs into her hair.

But none of that mattered when you had a Latin test to study for and a paper due on _Heart of Darkness_.

Charlotte had pulled an all-nighter in the linguistics building, sitting at the table with her chin resting on her hands – conjugating Latin verbs out loud ad infinitum for the rest of her study group, hoping they would memorize something by morning. At least Catholic school had been good for _that_. An entire lifetime in plaid skirts didn't help her get to breakfast on time, though – all that was left when she stumbled through the front door of the cafeteria was a stack of stale toast and a scrape of oatmeal on the bottom of a cold pot.

She hated oatmeal, so she dumped some milk and half a container of honey into the bowl just to make it edible before shuffling to the nearest table. Joseph Conrad kept her company during breakfast but he was never an easy read and Charlotte was convinced that her English professor had included the book in the course simply to see how many people would actually read Joseph Conrad versus watching _Apocalypse Now_.

Her money was on Marlon Brando and the _Ride of the Valkryies_.

Jimmy and Maggie were already watching the movie when she met up with them in one of the multimedia rooms at the library an hour later. Charlotte had her notes ready and her paper outline prepared in advance but all Maggie wanted to do was drink coffee while Jimmy made jokes about the smell of napalm in the morning. She fled before Willard reached Kurtz's compound, feeling just as sick as she always did watching the trip up the river, and rushed towards the little alcove that was her own private refuge.

She turned a corner around one of the stacks at the same time some idiot who wasn't even supposed to be there stretched his legs. Her right foot hooked into his shin and she tried like hell to bite back the 'oof' as she face-planted into the cold tiles.

It came out anyway.

The idiot's friend snorted like it was Charlotte's fault that she fell. She probably would have tumbled to the floor anyway, seeing two people where she was always alone, but being tripped by an idiot had only made it worse.

It was easier to get back up when no one was there.

He stared at her while she pulled her legs in, straightening her skirt and sighing in relief when she realized it was still around her knees – but her books were all over the place and the strap on her book bag was cutting off the circulation in her arm. The idiot shook his head and jumped out of his chair. Charlotte blinked while he helped her stand, trying to figure out where she had seen him before.

He looked so sorry about the whole thing that Charlotte smiled at him.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"I knock down chicks all the time so I can rescue them." His voice was muffled as he bent over to pick up her books.

"Sounds like a good plan." He twisted to look up at her and grinned. Not even Miles had looked at her like that and a hot flush spilled over her cheeks when he unfolded gracefully into a stand, her books held firmly in his arms. _No guts, no glory. _"And it's got to be better than the serial killer approach to dating," she added, holding out her hand. "I'm Charlotte. Charlotte Webb."

"No kidding?" he asked, shuffling the books underneath his left arm before grabbing her right hand with his. "Dean Winchester."

It was only a matter of time before Charlotte said something stupid – a stuttering joke about Latin noun declensions that only she thought was funny, followed up by a snort that would echo through the library – and she wouldn't be able to make a quick getaway with her books clamped tightly underneath Dean Winchester's arm. "My father has a unique sense of humor," she said, mouth quirking into what she hoped was a smile.

Dean must have gotten the message because he started handing the books back, scanning the titles one at a time.

"So he named you after the band?"

_Crap…_

She wasn't getting into _that_.

The question was easy enough to ignore when Dean Winchester's hazel eyes focused on her left arm. The scar was already standing out in bas relief thanks to the way he had her blushing. Charlotte bit her lip, giving a little cough. "He named me after the book," she returned, trying to catch his attention before he realized just how puckered the scar was and he got scared off by something worse than a dumb joke. "You know, Zuckerman's Famous Pig?"

Dean snorted. "Saw the cartoon." He looked away from her, scratching underneath his right ear. The other shoe had finally dropped – the scar that had frightened kids when she trailed behind Alma in the grocery store wearing a tank top had worked its mojo one more time. "Hey," Dean said abruptly. "Do you want to get lunch or something? It's the least I can do after knocking you down."

Charlotte's eyes widened and she smiled like a moron. "Sure," she managed.

"You like Mexican?"

She nodded. "Do they have nachos?"

"Best I've had," Dean said. He looked over his shoulder at the asshole. "See you around, dude." The asshole snorted and mouthed 'freshie' with a bend to his mouth that said Charlotte Anne Webb was pond scum.

They started walking towards the door together, standing so close that their arms were touching, and Dean cracked jokes that got more outrageous every time she glanced in his direction.

He was cackling by the time they passed the librarian's desk and Charlotte suddenly recognized the laugh. It belonged to the boy who bussed tables at the North Dorm cafeteria. He used it every time one of his friends came by and made some smartass comment about him being a good wife. He was the boy that Maggie and Janey and Anna would all flirt with whenever he stopped next to their table with his plastic tub and wet towel while Charlotte balanced a book on the table and tried not to listen.

She lowered her head, braids falling forward while she laughed at another joke, and she couldn't help wishing that he'd tuck one behind her ear as they passed through the front doors.

The sun was warm on the back of her neck when Dean launched into a story about his baby brother that shouldn't have been as funny as it was and he led her towards the biggest car in the back parking lot.

Maybe her daddy was right after all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The nachos were disgusting.

She glared at the soggy chip in her hand, covered in cold cheese and bending away from her fingers.

"You lied to me."

Dean chuckled. "I was just trying to get some chick to go eat tacos with me. I didn't know there were nacho standards."

"Well, for starters? They're not supposed to fall apart when you pick them up." Charlotte shrugged her shoulders as she popped the chip into her mouth. "But you scored points for bringing me to a restaurant where I can listen to a bad mariachi band _and_ watch people throw themselves off a fake waterfall."

"They're _cliff divers_, Charlotte," Dean retorted. "And wait until Chiquita the Angry Gorilla shows up. Then you'll recognize my true genius."

"You're bringing me back here when we're both old enough to order the Casarita." She smiled sweetly, watching his eyes go wide when they both realized what she had said. Dean grabbed his glass of water and swallowed. "By then, the mariachi band might not suck," Charlotte added.

Dean started laughing so hard that he couldn't stop snorting and he spit his water back into the glass just as the waitress brought their lunch. She frowned at both of them, setting a plate of tacos in front of Dean and offering the perfunctory warning about the sizzling cast iron plate for Charlotte's fajitas.

He started eating before Charlotte had sorted out where to put her plastic bowl of tortillas and the plate of garnishes.

And Dean Winchester could suck up food faster than a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Charlotte knew it wasn't polite to stare at him, her shoulders shaking while she covered her mouth with her hands and watched Dean inhale his lunch with the broken pieces of his taco shells. He didn't care about the sounds he made or the people looking in his direction.

She wished she could live like that.

He looked at her suddenly. "You don't hang out with a lot of guys, do you?"

"There was Chuck back in my Latin class." Even the roadies in her father's crew had better table manners than Dean. "But we didn't share a lot of classes with our brother school. Just Latin and an AP English class when I was a senior."

"Brother school?"

"I went to St. Francis' High School for Girls."

Another wide grin split his face and he leaned forward, licking his fingers. "Did you wear cute little plaid skirts to school every day?"

"Only someone who wasn't forced to wear plaid skirts every day for twelve years would ask that question," Charlotte retorted but it was impossible not to return his smile; the way his eyes lit up made her stomach tumble underneath her rib cage. "What about you?" she asked, picking up her glass of iced tea.

"Well, I liked to wear my plaid skirts in the spring," Dean said, timing it perfectly with her first swallow. Charlotte ducked her head, choking on her tea, and slammed the glass back down on the table with a crack that echoed through the dining room. She wanted to crawl under a rock when more people started watching them but Dean just grinned at her. "Gotcha," he added lightly.

"You prick!" She surprised herself by laughing, leaning back against the vinyl seat, and Dean's grin devolved into a chuckle of his own. "I was asking about school."

"Damn. Do I score points for being a cross-dresser?"

"Probably. As long as you don't dress like Mrs. Doubtfire," Charlotte shot back. She couldn't stop giggling, leaning her elbows on the table to keep from sliding off the seat. Her left elbow landed in her plate of guacamole, salsa and sour cream at the same time that her napkin slipped off of her lap. "Oh, shoot," she muttered, twisting to grab it.

"Wait!"

Their eyes met as the plate fell in slow motion and landed upside down in her lap, the contents splattering everywhere underneath the table. Kids were laughing and pointing at her even after their parents told them to shush but the parents smiled like Charlotte Anne Webb was a walking circus clown. She had the multicolored clothes to prove it.

"Hey." Dean's voice was soft but his eyes looked wild. His right hand was clenched into a fist, shaking by his water glass.

"I've got guacamole on my thigh," she said, bending down to survey the damage, "And some sour cream." She couldn't blame Dean for being pissed; she spilled food all the time – Miles had even walked out on her on prom night after she accidentally splashed his tuxedo with olive oil, leaving her behind to pay the bill. "A lot of the salsa ended up on your shoe," Charlotte added, biting her lip.

"Yeah, I can see that," Dean said, staring fiercely at the kids one table over who were still laughing. He tapped his boot on the back of the booth, eyes softening when the salsa slid onto the floor. "Pretty easy to fix. What about you?"

"I look like a baby puked on my lap." Charlotte wiped the mess on her skirt as hard as she could, the paper napkin shredding in her hand. "And I think I need some new napkins," she said, setting the tattered pieces next to her glass of iced tea. He was watching her with a small smile and Charlotte cocked her head, trying to figure out why he wasn't leaving.

"So do you like clumsy girls, Dean Winchester?" she asked finally.

"I like clumsy girls just fine."

"Just wondering," Charlotte returned. "You really didn't have to buy me lunch." Dean's eyes slid down to her chest, a half-smile flickering across his face that made her grin and her heart start pounding like a jackrabbit at the same time. "I probably would have tripped in front of you anyway. I was a couple hours overdue on making a fool of myself."

"And I'm a couple of hours overdue on asking you to go to a movie with me."

His hand was so close to hers that Charlotte wanted to touch it but she wasn't that brave – not when the nicest boy she'd met in a long time was asking her to go out on a date. He was probably just being polite.

"Do I get to pick the movie?" she asked.

Dean snorted. "That's pretty demanding from the chick who got salsa on my shoe."

"Well, they're doing a Monty Python retrospective in that little theater on Norton. A different movie every couple of hours beginning at 6:00."

"_Holy Grail_?"

Charlotte nodded. " Midnight showing."

"You're on."

Dean looked down at his watch like he was trying to find one of the secrets of the universe and Charlotte started tracing the patterns on the wallpaper, waiting for him to change his mind.

"We've definitely got some time to go fix your skirt," Dean said. She whipped her head around so quickly that one of her braids smacked into her face. Dean laughed. "I mean, you have to take it off," he added. Her entire body was on fire all over again, the blush spreading out from her belly. He leaned towards her. "I'm probably going to throw you in the back seat of my car and fix your skirt right then and there, Charlotte Webb."

"Are you serious?" It was a tiny whisper.

"Do I look like the kind of guy who eats crappy nachos just for kicks?"

Charlotte knew where it was leading and a small laugh bubbled out of her, arms automatically wrapping around her stomach because 'too fast' and 'too soon' rumbled through her ribcage, but his smile made her believe enough in Dean Winchester to close her eyes and jump.

"I've got a single." It came out more slowly than she wanted it to and her voice dipped low into her throat despite the hot flush roaring through her cheeks. "If you're serious," Charlotte added.

Dean was already waving at the waitress to get their check.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pulling her keys out of her book bag would have been easier if Dean hadn't pinned her against the wall, a hand on either side of her head.

Charlotte wasn't about to stop kissing him long enough to actually look in the bag, her teeth clicking against his when she sighed into his mouth, but she rummaged blindly through the front pouch. Her fingers brushed against a sharp metallic edge and she dragged herself away from him long enough to unlock the door and stumble inside.

Dean's hands were already roaming down past her hips when she locked the door, pulling her close to him with stormy eyes that shot a spark down between her thighs. Charlotte took a ragged breath. The only thing keeping her secret was a scrap of fabric but she tugged at the zipper resolutely until her skirt fell to the floor.

The way he kissed made her blood sing, made her want to do every reckless thing she had ever dreamed, but she couldn't even _look_ at Dean Winchester when she stepped out of the denim piled around her feet.

"Hey," he said. "This isn't going to work if you don't look at me."

"I think this was a mistake," Charlotte managed. "I've never done this before, Dean."

Dean moved behind her, his lips brushing against her ear. "I'll walk you through it," he whispered. "Might hurt a little the first time."

Being a virgin would have been a _hell_ of a lot easier.

"No, Dean. I've had sex before…but never with someone I've just met." Charlotte steeled herself before pulling away from him and turning around. Her shirt barely skimmed her underwear and, even with her curtains closed, the room wasn't dark enough to hide her secret. "And never without fair warning," Charlotte added, seeing Dean's eyes go wide when they focused on the shiny scars that marred her thighs.

She expected him to say something but Dean just kissed her, pushing her slowly backwards until her legs hit the edge of her bed and she dropped onto the comforter. Charlotte trembled when Dean curled his hands around the hem of her shirt, lifting it slowly past her abdomen. She watched him, swallowing when the shirt stopped moving.

Dean was staring at the tangle of white scars looping across her belly like snakes, the skin around his eyes stretched tight as they flickered along the whorls.

"I'm kind of ugly," Charlotte said.

"What happened?"

She wasn't able to answer until Dean brushed his fingers across the swell of her stomach.

"My parents split up when I was really little," she began. "I was staying with my mom over the summer when I was six and she fell asleep in her apartment. Dropped her cigarette onto the carpet." Dean hadn't stopped touching her and she tried to smile. He smiled back, pretending that he couldn't see the tears standing in her eyes or feel her body tremble when his thumb rubbed a circle around what was left of her belly button. "You really interested in all of this?" Charlotte asked suddenly.

"Yeah." And he kept right on rubbing her belly. "But you're _not_ ugly. It just…surprised me, is all."

Charlotte turned her head to the wall with a sharp breath, praying to any saint who would listen and begging them all to keep her from crying.

"Did it hurt?"

"I don't remember a lot of it." Just the way the hospital smelled and the sluggish flow in her brain whenever the morphine started pumping through her IV. She remembered every hard lump in her mattress and the way she _hated_ the sound of her physical therapist's voice pushing and pushing with a 'one more time' or a 'show your daddy what you can do' whenever it hurt so much that Charlotte wanted to curl up into a ball. "I was lucky. My mother didn't make it. I can't really complain about being in the hospital for a long time."

"My mom was in the hospital for a long time, too," Dean said. He was leaning down, breath hot on her stomach, and Charlotte jumped when he licked down the length of one scar. "Cancer," he explained, sitting back up and gently tugging her shirt up over her head. "About six months after my baby brother was born."

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah." Dean's breath hitched when he said it, pushing her slowly backwards against the mattress. "In complete remission for years. Doctors think it was one of those freak things."

He stretched out on top of her and the only thing stronger than the urge to hide was the need to put her arms around his neck, holding on loosely while she kissed up his jaw line. Dean stiffened every time her mouth touched skin but she was no stranger to things that cut deep. "Are you still serious?" Charlotte asked, not even trying to hide the catch in her throat.

"Hell, yeah." One hand traced the scar on her arm before Dean started unhooking the front clasps on her bra and Charlotte's body took over, nipples straining against the lace whenever the underside of his hands brushed against them. He grinned, leaning down to suck on the nearest one through the thin fabric – nipping at it gently until she gasped and tangled her fingers into his hair.

"What is it with you girls and front loaders?" Dean demanded suddenly.

Charlotte giggled but he didn't wait for her answer, moving to her other breast. "I was hoping some hot guy would trip me in the library," Charlotte gasped, arching her back and holding on tight when Dean sucked harder. "So I wore my easy access underwear," she added. He was wearing too many goddamn clothes. Charlotte tugged his t-shirt up over his head, blushing when their eyes met. "You got a problem with that, Dean Winchester?"

"Not complaining. I _like_ the easy access."

He unclasped the final hook, spreading the bra open while his mouth dipped down. Dean licked a line between her breasts, the rough skin of his palms only making her nipples harder, and her hands started moving on their own. They didn't stop until they found his jeans, slipping the button at his waist through the buttonhole before sliding her finger down the bulge pressing against his zipper. His moan made her hands work faster, hooking her fingers into his boxer shorts and inching them down past his hips right along with his pants.

He distracted her by pulling down her panties.

"Fuck," he said, one hand scrabbling into his pocket.

"Girls don't do it on command, you know."

Dean chuckled, but that didn't stop him from shaking his head like the joke was on him. "Don't suppose you've got a condom?"

"No." The stupid part of her brain had a mind of its own, the part that didn't care about being cautious or doing the right thing. Charlotte looped her arms around his neck, blood thrumming with 'him' and 'now' and not wanting to look back. "But I'm on the pill," she whispered in his ear.

"Oh." Dean looked down at her like she had hit him across the back of the head with a two by four. "_Oh_." His face screwed up suddenly. "You're not worried…"

"I'm healthy," Charlotte answered. "You healthy?"

"Yeah." He slipped open her thighs with his knees, as easy as breathing, and Charlotte sank back against the comforter. "But what if I'm lying?" His brow furrowed, eyes darkening as he looked down into hers. She laughed softly, resting her hands on his hips – but if Alma ever found out that Charlotte was taking the word of some boy she barely knew, she would chase Charlotte through the house with a frying pan. "I'm serious," Dean added.

"I've got a feeling you're pretty trustworthy."

"You do, huh?"

Her daddy would say that liars never cared enough to ask questions that counted for something. Before Charlotte could answer, Dean slipped inside her between one heartbeat and the next and the only thing that came out of Charlotte's mouth was a soft moan. She swelled around him, opening her thighs wide with a throb that sang 'deeper' and fingers that demanded more.

He could probably tell just by the way she flailed against him that Charlotte Anne Webb had only slept with one person in high school. There was nothing sexy about a scarred chick with most of her clothes off and she was so clumsy that she was seconds away from splitting open Dean Winchester's lower lip with her bony forehead.

Even lying down, she was still a klutz.

"It's okay," he whispered.

And it was.

He stretched her slowly, kissing her breathless like nothing else mattered but the way she tasted, and her body started curling into the curves instead of fighting the way her belly slapped against his. Dean plucked tiny little moans from her whenever her hips bucked, his breath a tattered counterpoint to the smack of the headboard against the wall and the rush in her veins every time his nails grazed down her arms. She was falling in slow pulls, meeting him push for push and picking up speed with every scratch – blown apart at the seams with a 'Dean' and a spasm and the look in his eyes.

His entire body jerked when he thrust up inside her, coming with a burning rush and a roar that might have been her name. He started catching every noise she made with his mouth, pulse fluttering against hers while she trembled around him, and there was nothing between them but sweat and goose bumps. The breeze swirling outside her window opened the curtains just enough for sunshine to shimmer across his shoulders.

Dean chuckled and Charlotte brushed her hand down his cheek with a little smile. "See? It's a lot better when you're not in the back of your crap car."

"She's not a crap car," Dean retorted but his arms tightened around her. "And you're just lucky I think you're fucking cute, because usually insulting my car puts you on my bad side."

Charlotte's eyes widened – he hadn't said 'ugly' and he hadn't said 'gross' and he didn't look away like Charlotte was one huge mistake, even when she was laying there with her underwear hanging around her knees and a stupid grin flickering around the corners of her mouth because Dean Winchester thought she was _fucking_ cute. She pulled his mouth down to hers and kissed him, trembling all over again when he sighed into her with something bigger than a promise.

She decided that he could trick her into eating disgusting nachos any time he wanted to as long as he always kissed her back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Charlotte grew up listening to songs filled with kismet, verses overflowing with sex and need and fear pounded out to screeching guitar riffs and the backbeat of drums that declared war against the bass line.

She never understood what those songs meant until Dean Winchester laid her bare, using his mouth and his fingers and the way he whispered her name every time she shivered. Something in his eyes cracked when their eyes met and Dean sat up, looking as lost as she felt. They were barreling towards a crossroads, two kids in one of her daddy's songs running as hard as they could because the second time always meant more than the first.

The second time was when you took a chance, finding something you never knew was missing or making the mistake you could never take back, and it swallowed you whole no matter what happened – two sides of the same coin and all you could do was watch and wait for heads or tails.

"I'm scared, too," she whispered, sitting up to kiss him on the shoulder.

Dean twisted to look at her, eyes going wide, but he didn't resist when she put her arms around his neck and drew him backwards.

Charlotte's mouth opened up underneath his when he bunched his hands into her pillow and suddenly all that mattered was the way he rammed hard inside of her, hard and slow and fast, and his name was coming out over and over like her very own prayer. Her heels slid into the backs of his knees, hips rocking and everything, God, everything she was poured out of her with a scream and a roll of her hips – and, _fuck_, she was popping like a bottle rocket and he was howling her name and all she could do was hold onto his shoulders until his arms wrapped around her.

Charlotte listened to him breathe, an entire night of studying Latin pulling her down into something warm and heavy.

She woke up when light coalesced underneath her eyelashes, sitting up slowly and blinking at Dean while she adjusted to the glare from her desk lamp. He was still there smiling back at her, all rumpled hair and warm skin. "Hey," she said, rubbing her hand across his chest. It was slick to the touch.

_Crap! _

She had drooled all over him while they were sleeping. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" Charlotte grabbed the edge of her comforter, wiping off his chest as quickly as she could.

"Girls drool on me all the time," Dean said lightly. "Hazard of being so goddamn handsome."

"I drool on my pillow all the time." The words fell out of her mouth before Charlotte could stop them, her face screwing up as she waited for him to laugh. "And in case you wondered, it's true," she murmured. "You've spent all afternoon boinking the world's biggest dork."

"Lucky for you, Winchester boys are closet dork fans – especially when they boink us back." Dean grinned, tugging on one of her braids, before looking up at her picture wall; black and white photographs of her cousins and two friends from high school, along with the obligatory family shot. "You sure got a lot of pictures of real people. Back in my room, it's mostly centerfolds and stuff."

"_Really_."

She sure as hell couldn't figure out why a beautiful boy who covered his walls in centerfolds would spend the afternoon screwing a clumsy girl who drooled on his chest.

"Yeah. My roomie's a real macho perv." He scratched underneath his ear when Charlotte raised her eyebrows, as nervous a gesture as her blushing, and poked her in the arm. "And you're not one to talk." Dean pointed at the most recent picture she had taken, snapped near the porch swing before her daddy left for his summer tour. "You've got a picture of yourself with the leader singer of Charlotte's We…" His eyes narrowed.

_So he named you after the band?_

"That's where my father's unique sense of humor kicks in," Charlotte said. She grimaced. "He named the band after me."

"Holy shit!" Questions flickered across his face, variations of the ones that Charlotte had been asked all her life. She lowered her eyes. "That must really suck," Dean observed with a low whistle. "Bad enough he gave you a crappy ass name, and then you have to see it all over the place because he's _famous_. I hope you get royalties or something for emotional damages because the whole thing freaking blows."

He looked like he wanted to crawl underneath her comforter when Charlotte started laughing. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed Dean soundly on the cheek. "Do you like Thai?" she asked. "I thought we could go out for dinner before the movie. My treat."

"Uh…" Dean looked away and scratched his neck. "Never had it."

No one could be that itchy without a serious case of psoriasis. He probably thought she was trying to pay him back for the crappy nachos.

"Oh."

"Don't mind trying it, though." Dean grinned at her, cocky and defiant and drinking her in like she wasn't the clumsy girl who tripped over his feet. Miles never really looked at her, even during sex, but Dean Winchester could make a girl blush just by saying 'yes' to Thai food. "Don't mind at all," he added. Dean put one hand on her arm. "But I'm paying for the movie."

"And I'll buy the snacks," Charlotte said. "Movie theater nachos aren't even made with real cheese. It's not fair to force you to pay for my junk food addiction."

"Hell, Charlotte. I was raised on Cheez Whiz and crackers. That's Winchester soul food." He snorted. "You're a chick after my own heart."

Dean didn't blush – he didn't even scratch himself – but she recognized the way his jaw clenched, wishing he could force the words back inside. Charlotte cocked her head with a small smile. "Cheez Whiz should be its own food group," she said, leaning forward to brush her lips against his.

Dean's hands squeezed her shoulders, holding her tight against him. Her fingers were already in his hair, tongue darting into his mouth while he drew his nails slowly down her arms.

They would never make it to the movie if she kept kissing him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When Charlotte's alarm went off on Monday morning, Dean was gone.

He hadn't left anything behind, like a sock or a note or the t-shirt that he wore underneath his long-sleeved shirt – nothing that he could use as an excuse to come back. There wasn't even a dent in the pillow where he had slept, the scent of him missing from the soft cotton. Charlotte wouldn't have known he had been there at all if it wasn't for the scratches on her back and the way Dean had pulled the comforter off of the bed.

It was time to wake up.

The bathroom was empty so she didn't have to wait for one of the showers. Charlotte rested her forehead against the tiles and wrapped her arms around her stomach, letting the hot water pour over her back until it turned cold. She had never expected him to stay – one perfect weekend wasn't a promise, washed away in a frozen spray that swirled down the drain.

Even the sun on her skin as she walked to the cafeteria couldn't melt the icy fingers in her belly.

She found Jimmy and Maggie at their regular table, sharing a grapefruit.

They started laughing when Charlotte pulled a highlighter out of her book bag and began marking up her paper outline between sips of orange juice. Jimmy cracked the first joke and Charlotte pasted a smile on her face when Maggie pretended to be shocked that Charlotte hadn't finished her rough draft, especially after she had missed Jimmy spinning at _Alfie's_ the night before.

Charlotte wasn't about to tell them that Dean was feeding her cold pot stickers dipped in a spicy sauce that he deliberately kept dripping on her so that he could lick it off.

She wasn't about to tell them anything, deflecting their questions until Jimmy left for his Economics class and Maggie decided to walk with him as far as the sports center. She waved as they left, choking on her orange juice when a plastic tray slammed down on the table.

Dean Winchester slid into the chair across from her, leaning forward to pull off a piece of her toast. He popped it into his mouth, sucking the strawberry jam off of his fingers. "Morning, Charlotte," he said, stretching her name into a drawl that had her squirming.

_What are you doing here? _

"Good morning," Charlotte said. He stared back as if nothing had changed, an expectant smile flickering across his face. She swallowed. "What are you doing…after dinner?"

"I'm going to the library with you."

"Oh."

"And since I don't have to get up at the ass crack of dawn to wash dishes, I'm going to figure out how many different noises you can make before your alarm clock goes off tomorrow morning." Dean grinned, snatching a piece of sausage from her plate. "Hearing you scream my name sure beats listening to you snore."

"I do not _snore_." Charlotte leaned down to pull her organizer out of her book bag, hoping he didn't see her cheeks turn bright red.

She had only screamed his name _once_.

"You sure as hell do," Dean shot back. He chewed on her sausage, watching her write 'library with Dean' on the calendar. "You might as well write down 'dinner with Dean' right before that. I'm pretty sure we'll both remember 'sex with Dean' but go ahead and write that down, too. Just in case."

"You're just lucky I think you're really cute, Dean Winchester, because usually making fun of my schedule puts you on my bad side."

Charlotte glared at him over the edges of her glasses, which only made Dean laugh harder. She managed to get his whole schedule for the week, filling in the calendar with his classes and his kick-boxing practices and his work study shifts. His cackle reverberated through the entire dining room, telling anyone within a ten-foot radius that Charlotte Webb was pretty damn sure of herself if she was using a pen to write him into her schedule before winking at her and grabbing another piece of sausage.

But Dean was waiting for her after psychology class. He poked Charlotte on the arm, telling her that she had forgotten about lunch. When Charlotte turned around to poke him right back, he leaned down and kissed her.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dean Winchester was not part of her plan.

The plan was Alma's fault, choosing Charlotte the summer that she turned ten.

Charlotte had wanted to spend the summer reading _The Chronicles of Narnia_ but Alma had volunteered them both to work at a homeless shelter. Charlotte worked in the food kitchen, doing easy things like making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Alma would flash a proud smile whenever she ate lunch with the shelter kids.

She loved eating with them – they didn't expect Charlotte to say much but they didn't look at the scars on her arm any more than they looked at their own cuts and bruises.

And they told stories.

She would nibble the edges off of her Ding Dong while she listened, caught up in the war between Heaven and Hell – the secret myths passed down from shelter to shelter, where God had abandoned the world and where angels fought a losing battle against Satan.

In their world, the Devil walked the earth in the skin of a man and the Virgin Mary cried bloody tears in mirrors and killed any child who called her name three times. The stories were full of angels that danced in neon lights and there was a Blue Lady who taught a song that protected them from the dark, the only thing that could hide a child from Bloody Mary and the demons who tried to keep their souls from finding the angels' encampment.

Those kids believed that when they died it was their duty to find the angels and join the fight against Satan. God might have abandoned the world but that wasn't important, not when they could fight at the angels' side using nothing but the lives they had lost.

They were heroes, willing to fight in death for a cause they would never win, and all they got in return were black eyes and broken bones from their parents and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made by strangers.

Charlotte swore that she would do something to help them when she grew up.

Even her daddy had laughed at the idea of a girl who hated talking to people becoming a social worker but he signed the check for her first semester's tuition at Georgetown all the same.

Dean didn't laugh when she told him the story, a whisper in the dark that Charlotte murmured into the curve of his neck. Secrets always slipped out when they were tangled up in her sheets, her palm on his chest while his heart beat underneath her fingertips.

Dean's secret was kept locked underneath a cocky grin and a swagger – a twelve year old boy named Sam, beaten into a coma the summer that Dean was sixteen.

There wasn't much to do but hold on tight, ignoring the ache in her arms when Sam's body was falling because some bastard had nearly killed Dean Winchester's baby brother in a parking lot. She would never let go, not when Dean's voice was a crack in the dark – a sharp-edged whisper about the red haze in his eyes right before he pulled the kid off Sam and slammed him into the ground.

No one hurt a Winchester without paying for it and Alex Masters was no exception, ending up in the same hospital as Sam.

Dean ended up doing community service. He would have gone to jail if the kid hadn't confessed that Sam was just laying there, bleeding onto the asphalt, before Dean barreled into him.

His payment came from the court-appointed psychologist who said Dean had a 'violent streak' and forced him into anger management classes. After one paragraph in a court record, Dean Winchester became branded as the boy who put a kid into the hospital with his bare hands – a bad boy in his leather jacket. Only one person besides his parents believed in him, a school counselor named Jim Murphy who helped Dean get the scholarships he needed at a university where no one would ever know what had happened back in Lawrence, Kansas.

Georgetown was Dean's second chance.

Charlotte Anne Webb wasn't a part of his plan, either.

But that never kept her from waking him up on Sunday mornings, scratching circles on his belly while she sang to him. Dean's face would scrunch up and he would make a crack about her caterwauling loud enough to scare ghosts. He would wake her up on Saturday mornings, hands holding her thighs open while his mouth dipped down between them. Charlotte would blush and she would whisper things that made his eyes shine.

They went to bad martial arts movie marathons and stuffed themselves on greasy pizza, meeting up with Jimmy and Maggie and Bobby for breakfast and walking to class together when they were done. She watched him spar in the sports center, all power and grace and the catch in her throat when she realized all over again what Dean Winchester would do to protect someone he loved. He would kiss her hard and push her out onto the dance floor, his laugh louder than the music when she started whirling underneath the tacky disco ball, and he always picked her up when she fell.

And they made promises when the dark had a rhythm of its own, a shared vocabulary of lips and fingers and flushed skin – the codex of two bodies without any secrets.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thanksgiving snuck up on them, between her application for a summer internship program and Dean's anthropology term paper.

They both had flights back home on Wednesday. Charlotte didn't want to move when they said goodbye, clutching the collar of his leather jacket while they stood in the middle of Dulles' east terminal. She memorized the smell of his hair, whispering that she would call him every night and murmuring that she would have a surprise waiting for him when they both got back.

As she watched the back of his head disappear into the crowd, Charlotte promised herself that she would never let a holiday go by again without bringing it up before it was too late to do something about it.

A car was waiting for her back in Savannah, along with Uncle Jacob and all of her cousins. Alma was waiting on the porch when the car pulled up to the house, standing next to her daddy, and both of them smiled when Charlotte tumbled out of the car and started running. They met her halfway up the steps, the smell of Alma's chocolate chip cookies wafting out the screen door as she hugged them.

But she already missed Dean.

Charlotte made herself wait three hours after Thanksgiving dinner before she excused herself from football and turkey sandwiches, sneaking a piece of chocolate pie out of the kitchen, and headed upstairs to her room. She ate the pie slowly, working out what she would say when someone answered the phone, and sucked in a breath while she dialed Dean's number.

The phone rang three times before a soft voice said, "Hello?"

"May I, uh..." Charlotte shook her head sharply. _So much for rehearsing it._ "May I speak with Dean, please?"

"I'll ask him." The boy's voice cracked at the end, dipping down into a lower register, and something muffled the noise on the other end of the line. Charlotte remembered Sam's shy smile and shaggy hair from a picture that Dean had shown her and it didn't take much to imagine Sam holding his hands over the mouthpiece. "Dean, there's a girl on the phone for you!" The faraway rumble in the background must have been Dean because Sam sighed. "I'm not telling some chick you're hitting the can," he bellowed. "That's gross!"

Sam Winchester sounded just like the little brother Charlotte had always wanted.

He coughed and spoke directly into the phone. "My brother is indisposed at the moment."

"I can wait," Charlotte answered.

"Okay…" Sam drew out the word with another resigned sigh. "I'll let him know." Whatever he was using to cover up the mouthpiece wasn't working the way Sam thought it would but Charlotte didn't have the heart to tell him that she could hear everything he said, not when he was trying so hard to be polite to her. "She's not buying your stupid bathroom story," Sam yelled. "And I'm so not telling her that you're taking a dump. Don't even – " There was a thump. "Screw you, De – "

"Son of a bitch!" Dean was suddenly roaring into the phone. "Amy, are you deaf or something? I already told you three times that we're not going out tomorrow and we're not going out on Saturday. We're not doing anything together. Ever. Just deal with it and stop fucking calling me! You got that?"

"I got that." She grinned. "Lucky for me, I'm not Amy."

"Oh, shit. Charlotte?"

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I? I wouldn't want to keep you from hitting the can." Charlotte tried to say it with a straight face but she ended laughing so hard that she almost dropped the phone. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she added, curling around her pillow. "Making your baby brother run interference for you with a stupid bathroom story."

"Yeah, well…" Dean's voice trailed off. He was probably scratching underneath his left ear. He took a deep breath. "You alone?" he asked, pitching his voice so low that they were back in her dorm room and he was looking up at her from between her thighs.

"I'm sharing my room with my cousin Maisey."

"Damn. So you're going to make me have a _boring_ conversation." He snorted. "Am I the only one who thinks the Macy's parade sucks? I mean, we all know how it's going to end every year."

"We could talk about _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_."

"Hell, no. That would just make you want to sing the goddamn song about being truly scrumptious and I'd have to find a window to open so I could hold the phone as far away as possible to keep my ears from bleeding. You'd be killing cats all over Kansas."

Charlotte was still laughing when Maisey came to bed. She excused herself long enough to drag the hallway phone into the nearest bathroom and it was almost four in the morning when she tripped back into her room, stubbing her toe on the door with a little 'crap' that made Maisey giggle. Charlotte limped to the bed, slipping into her pajamas and curling up onto her side underneath the sheets.

Maisey poked Charlotte's shin with her toe and asked her if the boy from the bathroom was cute. Both of them giggled when Charlotte told her that Dean Winchester was _fucking_ cute.

She left home on Sunday morning when it was still dark, waiting until the last moment to say goodbye to her daddy. He whispered 'stay happy' into her hair and he was already waving goodbye as Charlotte walked to the car. She tried to make small talk with the driver but he looked about as thrilled to be driving back-country roads as she was to be alone with a stranger, so Charlotte pulled _Pride and Prejudice_ out of her book bag and let them both have some peace.

When she got back to the dorm, Maggie was waiting for her with a slinky green dress, a garter belt and a pair of high heels. Charlotte thought she looked like an idiot, with her hair curled and more makeup on her face than she had worn in four years of high school. She had even let Maggie pluck her eyebrows and put red nail polish on her fingers, drawing the line when Maggie wanted to bring in some of the boys on their floor to tell Charlotte how she looked.

Charlotte had other things to worry about, going over the lyrics in her head just to make certain she remembered them while Maggie kept making last-minute additions to her handiwork. After Maggie left, Charlotte practiced the dance to the point where she could get to the second verse without falling down.

The look on Dean's face when he stepped into the room was worth Maggie's ruthless abandon with her tweezers.

Charlotte pushed him towards the bed, locking the door and staring at him over her shoulder. She expected him to laugh when she started singing in a breathy voice, sounding more like Mickey Mouse than Marilyn Monroe, but all he did was watch. Charlotte shimmied her hips when she started the chorus, slipping one of the straps off her shoulder with an 'I touch myself,' and caught her heel on the floor rug.

She fell right into his lap, turning as red as the polish on her nails – but it didn't matter, not with Dean murmuring 'you're keeping on the shoes' before he started sliding the second strap down her shoulder.

* * *

A/N: 

The title of this story is a song lyric from "I Have the Touch" by Peter Gabriel. A more detailed analysis of this choice will be included in the final author's notes for the story.

Georgetown, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't actually have a Social Work graduate program but…given that Casa Bonita (complete with its cliff divers and Chiquita the Angry Gorilla) is actually in Denver, I think I can be forgiven for adding a Social Work program to Georgetown.

The stories that I allude to in Charlotte's flashback to working at the homeless shelter are based on the ones in the Myths Over Miami article. The stories themselves are absolutely fascinating to me and I go back and read the article at least once a year.

Ellie Jenkins, for the curious, was a character I created based on the kids I read about in the article.

For those non-Americans, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ends with Santa Claus on his sleigh. _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_, likewise, is often shown on TV during Thanksgiving weekend.

The song Charlotte uses in her attempted striptease is "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls.


	2. I move with the movement

**Any Chance Collision  
**

Georgetown was the next step in the plan but her daddy was always telling her that life could turn on a dime. If the trick was learning how to dance, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** The Winchester boys aren't mine but I'd make Dean wear his boots all the time if they were. 

**Overall Rating**: M (Language, Angst, Sex)

**Overall Pairings**: Dean/OFC (HET)

**Author's Notes**: This is a remix of _Always Falling_.

**Miscellaneous**: No spoilers for the show but this is unabashedly AU.

**Betas: ****embroiderama** and **quirkies**

* * *

_**Part Two: I move with the movement  
**_

Her daddy had promised to take her to Europe for Christmas – just the two of them walking through London and Paris and Florence, stopping at every bookstore they passed and listening to jazz in old clubs along the Seine. It was their perfect Christmas, the bedtime story he would tell when she was laying in her hospital bed and listening to the soft cadence of his voice making promises of 'someday' just to get through the night.

He had even purchased the tickets, hiding them in her suitcase while Charlotte was saying goodbye to Alma over blueberry pancakes. She didn't find them until she unpacked the Monday after Thanksgiving, looking up from her name as Dean's snore ripped through her room. Charlotte put the tickets into her desk drawer as quietly as she could before she stretched out next to him on the bed. Dean shifted in his sleep when her arm snaked around his waist, his mouth half-open and his architecture book laying flat across his chest.

Charlotte knew that she had to tell him.

She just didn't know how.

Jimmy thought it wasn't a problem, rolling his eyes because the answer was obvious. He was going to Italy with his family and his boyfriend was coming along with them but there was no way in hell that she would ever convince her daddy to bring anyone on the trip that they had planned together for twelve years – he scowled every time Charlotte had mentioned the name 'Dean Winchester' over Thanksgiving, his eyes full of old admonitions.

Maggie thought it wasn't a problem, either – asking Charlotte if Dean had ever said 'I love you' or introduced Charlotte to _anyone_ as his girlfriend, like the words were more important than the way Dean still fed her cold pot stickers every Sunday night or rocked her to sleep with a hand splayed open on her belly. He would sigh something she couldn't make out into the curve of her neck every time her fingers interlaced with his, pulling her in tight to his hips.

The only advice that Alma would give was that things happened for a reason.

She found out from a news feed on MTV that Charlotte's Webb had announced they would be joining "The Masters of Metal" line-up in the spring and that the band was preparing for it by playing informal shows at smaller venues in Europe through mid-February. Charlotte was on the phone with her daddy's tour manager fifteen minutes later, trying to keep her voice from cracking while she asked if it was true. She hung up as soon as Evan said 'yes' and started dialing her daddy's hotel.

Some vapid moron named 'Roberta' answered the phone in a pinched voice that made Charlotte's jaw clench. When Charlotte identified herself and demanded to speak with her father, Roberta giggled like they were old friends and told Charlotte that they were going to have 'so much _fun_ together' in Milan over Christmas – just two girls loose in the fashion district with Aaron Webb's credit card.

Charlotte's hand clamped around the handset so tightly that her joints went numb and empty words spilled into the receiver, a joke about cardigans and combat boots and beat-up old glasses being good enough for girls from Georgia. Her daddy interrupted her, voice overflowing with an apology that made her body vibrate like a live wire.

_I didn't mean for you to find out this way, baby girl._

Charlotte didn't know if he was talking about the tour or the girlfriend or the broken promise but she crumpled up her tickets and tossed them into the wastebasket. Alma would have stayed with her instead of going to Louisiana but Charlotte wasn't about to ask Alma to change her plans, especially with her sister Sadie being sick, and it wouldn't be the first time Charlotte wandered around the house by herself.

Dean didn't say much when she finally told him about the tour but his eyes darkened when Charlotte admitted that she was staying home alone – just a big old white farmhouse and a girl reading all of her favorite books.

She managed to make him grin by sliding off his boxer shorts, whispering about everything they could do together on the phone before pulling him into her mouth. Dean's hands twisted in her hair while her head bobbed. Dean growled the faster she worked him and his hips jerked, so close to spilling over with the way he was bunching her comforter in his hands that he surprised her by yanking her head up long enough to kiss her and rip off her old tank top.

Charlotte had all but forgotten the conversation when they were walking out of the campus theater three days later, their breath a white mist underneath the lights. People milled around them still talking about_ Saving Private Ryan_ but they shuffled down along the sidewalk in silence, hands jammed into their pockets, and their arms bumped together when Charlotte stepped out of someone's way.

"You want to come to my house for Christmas?" Dean asked the question like he was wondering if they should go out for pizza. "Mom and Dad said you could stay for the whole winter break. You'd even meet Geek Boy."

"I'd love to," she said, slowing down to stand on the tips of her toes and kiss Dean's cheek.

The way he smiled made her so dizzy that Charlotte slipped her arm through his just to keep from falling down.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Charlotte packed her suitcases three days before they were supposed to leave but they didn't fit in the trunk with all of their presents and the gift sets she had purchased from _Hickory Farms_.

They sat on the sidewalk, along with Dean's duffel bag, while Dean moved cheese wheels and joked about the shindig they could host in his parents' basement. He finally shrugged his shoulders and shoved their bags into the back seat of the car, chuckling when Charlotte pulled the travel directions she had printed off of _MapQuest_ out of her book bag and slipped them into the glove compartment.

She turned bright red when she saw the maps that were already nestled inside, poking Dean on the arm while his cackle echoed down the empty street. He could have told her that he already had maps instead of hooting like a lunatic.

"Let's go," she snapped, slamming the door. Her jaw clenched when their eyes met. "We can get four hours of driving in before it starts to get dark."

"No one's going to yell at us if we're not pulling into Lawrence by 5:00 PM on Tuesday." Dean's voice was soft. He grinned when she clicked her seatbelt closed, arms folding across her lap. "And it's not like we're going to run out of supplies any time soon if there's a blizzard or something," he added, turning the key in the ignition. Dean waggled his eyebrows. "Even got ways to stay warm if we careen into a ditch."

Charlotte leaned her elbow on the window ledge when Dean chuckled and watched the trees go by, their snow-covered branches acting as a backdrop to every accident she could conjure – so much blood on jagged glass as Dean's body lay broken, pitched forward through the front window.

"Why do you turn everything into a joke, Dean?"

He slipped a cassette tape into the stereo and the music was low enough to hear the tires on the road. "Because it sure beats acting like everything is the end of the world," Dean said.

Charlotte didn't say anything, blowing on the window and tracing the lines of a tree across the glass, and Dean turned up the volume. Iron Maidenwas arcing through the back of her head, the drum beat keeping time with the muscles throbbing behind her eyes, and she rubbed her temples.

_You watch the world exploding every single night,  
Dancing in the sun – a newborn in the light.  
Brothers and their father joining hands and make a chain;  
The shadow of the Wicker Man is rising up again._

"You…want me to turn around?" Dean asked finally.

"No."

The cold seeped into her knuckles and Charlotte pulled her hands up past the edge of her sleeves, feeling the elastic catch around her fingertips. Dean swallowed, getting onto the highway. He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel in time to the music, speeding up to match the other cars on the road. It was snowing, puffy white flakes falling onto the windshield before they were wiped away by the rhythmic slap of plastic moving across glass.

"I don't like getting laughed at," Charlotte said softly, biting her thumbnail. "And I just…" Her breath came out in a huff. "I just want to make a good impression. So your family will like me."

"They'll like you just fine." He snorted. "_I_ like you, even when you're fucking emo."

"That's because your taste sucks, Dean." Charlotte curled her legs up beside her and scooted across the front seat to lean into his shoulder, looking up at him with a grin. There was a small smile on his face when she slipped underneath his arm, resting her head on his chest. "You know there are only two people left in the world who even _listen_ to Iron Maiden."

"Two, huh?"

"Just you and a beer-guzzling idiot named Bubba who's always scratching his crotch."

"This is so on," he retorted, turning up the stereo loud enough to rattle the windows.

Dean spent the rest of the afternoon choosing music from a decrepit shoebox full of cassette tapes. Most of them had been played so much that the labels had worn off and some of the plastic cases were cracked. Her daddy had always told her to never underestimate the power of the classics and it was true. All that was holding Dean's copy of _Houses of the Holy_ together was hope; Robert Plant sounded like he was singing in a wind tunnel through most of "Dancing Days."

Charlotte's revenge was to sing right along with the music.

The counteroffensive was a chorus of moans in the dark, set off by squeaky mattress springs and someone pounding on the walls between their rooms, but being hoarse didn't keep Charlotte from belting out the words right along with every cassette Dean pushed into the stereo the next day. By the time the Impala crossed the state line into Kansas, Creedence was blaring through the car and both of them were bellowing "Up Around the Bend" at the top of their lungs.

When they turned the corner onto Hernn Lane, the door to a green house swung open and a lanky figure ran to the curb. Sam Winchester was ganglier than his pictures made him out to be, with his loose-fitting sweatshirt and shaggy hair falling to his shoulders. Charlotte's throat hurt when she realized Sam was limping while he ran, listing to the left until he stood next to the passenger door.

Charlotte opened the door and stumbled out, neither of them saying a word while they stared at each other. Dean hovered at Sam's elbow and she kept waiting for him to do something beyond stuff his hands into his pockets and grin while she and Sam circled each other like scared cats.

Sam's mouth twisted.

"Do you like Shakespeare?" he asked.

Charlotte nodded.

"Would you like to go see _Shakespeare in Love_ with me? It's an R-rated movie and I can't get my parents or any of my friends from school to go and I really want to see it in the theaters." Sam managed not to strangle the words in his rush to get them out, taking another breath. "And there's no way Dean'll take me. He doesn't _do_ chick flicks. And I'm pretty sure the movie's a chick flick, because it's a love story and Dean doesn't do love stories, either. Says they're sappy."

Sam looked so earnest that there was no way to say 'no,' even with his older brother scowling over Sam's shoulder. Charlotte laughed, throwing her arms loosely around Sam's neck, and both of them trembled before they settled into the hug. "I can't think of anyone I'd rather go see the movie with, Sam Winchester," she replied. "And I'll even make _Dean_ go see it with us."

"_Cool_," Sam whispered, letting go of her.

It was the calm before the storm.

Dean's parents were standing in the doorway, both of them smiling at her. Sam rambled about the presents they had moved to the back of the car that morning, his voice so excited that she wanted to hug him all over again, but Dean headed up the walk. Charlotte followed him, doing her best to smile and meet the Winchesters' eyes without turning bright red. It didn't work – but Dean's father pulled her through the front door anyway with a 'Mr. and Mrs. Winchester are my parents' and a grin that matched the one Dean used when he was blowing raspberries on her belly.

She turned around to find Dean. He was hugging his mother, arms tight around her shoulders, and he looked so startled when Mary Winchester kissed his cheek and whispered something into his ear that all Charlotte could do was follow John Winchester up the stairs. It was a side of Dean that she had never seen before, a private moment between a mother and her son that brought a catch to her throat. Charlotte focused on his father's deep voice, laying ground rules about her visit while showing her the guest room where she would be sleeping.

Before she had even unpacked, Charlotte was elbow deep in the sink. She passed peeled potatoes to Sam so that he could cut them up into chunks and stick them in a pot with milk, whole cloves of garlic, onions and lots of butter. John Winchester was marinating steaks to barbecue outside despite the snow that had started falling, cracking jokes with Mrs. Win – Charlotte shook her head sharply – with _Mary_ while she made a salad with Dean.

Dean pinched Charlotte's rear-end when he threw left-over celery stalks into the garbage disposal, breathing a hot 'you thought they wouldn't like you' against the hairs rising up on her neck.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dean tried to be subtle by dumping enough flour in a mixing bowl to raise a cloud. He snuck down to kiss her when Sam was busy pulling a bag of chocolate chips out of the freezer but there weren't enough baking supplies in the world to hide their stupid grins whenever they looked at each other, her 'that's why I love you' tangled up with his 'I fucking want you' and the bruise on her back from being pushed into the Impala's steering wheel.

Even Sam had probably figured out what they were doing in the car after breakfast.

_You know what really sucks? Being in love with a girl who talks so much, you can't get her mouth to slow down long enough to kiss her._

Charlotte blushed, remembering the way her hips rolled when Dean's fingers danced inside of her, but she grabbed the back of his t-shirt with both fists and slowed down long enough to kiss him hard. Sam made gagging noises while Mary laughed and folded flour slowly into the eggs, butter, and sugar they had already mixed together. Dean called her a walking chick flick with nothing better to do than get flour all over his shirt but he squeezed her arms when Charlotte's hands tightened. She stood on the tips of her toes, holding on until her fingers ached.

Sam got louder the longer they kissed.

It was the strangled sucking noise that made Charlotte laugh, resting her forehead on Dean's chest.

"That's it," Dean muttered, launching himself at his brother and rubbing his knuckles across Sam's hair.

The screams were loud enough for John Winchester to poke his head into the kitchen, grinning at Mary from across the room as he popped the cap off of his beer bottle.

"The way you boys carry on, Charlotte's going to think we didn't teach you any manners." John's voice was gruff but his eyes lit up when Mary smiled back at him. Charlotte lowered her head; it was like listening to her daddy sing old songs about her mother, standing behind the screen door with Alma's arm around her shoulders while his voice cracked.

"She's seen Dean eat, Dad." Sam rolled his eyes. "And he's his own _species_."

"To be fair, Sam, the boots hide his sixth toe," Charlotte said.

Sam snorted, doubling over and holding his stomach.

"That's real cute coming from the girl who sings like Mickey Mouse gargling with glass." He grabbed Charlotte's hand when she poked him in the stomach. "And poking me with your bony finger isn't going to change that."

"Dean!" But John sounded more amused than angry.

"He's definitely your son, John." Mary laughed when John shook his head. "And we turned out just fine after you stopped pulling my pigtails." She flashed another smile before John engulfed her in his arms, muscles flexing underneath his shirt as he pulled her into a kiss.

"Am I the only one who isn't going to suck face in the kitchen?" Sam groaned.

"That depends, Samantha," Dean shot back. "You still carrying around that little mirror you chicks use when you're practicing French kissing?"

Sam ignored him, pouring chocolate chips into the bowl. "Are you guys going to the Fullers' wine and cheese party tonight?" He didn't wait for his parents to answer, glancing slyly at Dean. "Because if you are, I thought Charlotte and I could go see _Shakespeare in Love_ instead of watching Dean belch his way through _A Charlie Brown Christmas_."

"It's not belching." Dean grinned.

Sam grinned back, stirring the chocolate chips into the dough. No one said anything when Charlotte took a spoonful for herself, listening to Dean and Sam argue about whether or not it was really belching if you did it in time to Snoopy's theme song. Sam made noises in the back of his throat every time Dean came up with a new argument, both of them playing an old game of one-upmanship to see who could make her laugh the hardest.

Charlotte was still giggling when they said goodbye to John and Mary, pulling on their boots and winter coats before trudging out to the car. Dean tugged her hat down using the pom-poms before she waddled down the driveway next to Sam. Her foot slipped on one patch of ice and Charlotte fell backwards with a loud 'whoops' that had her cheeks burning despite the lightly falling snow. Dean's hands slipped underneath her shoulders, steadying her before Charlotte hit the concrete.

He was always catching her when she fell.

Dean slid into to driver's seat, unlocking the passenger door and holding it open for her. Sam sat in the back, leaning on the front seat between their shoulders, and grunted when Dean slipped _Back in Black_ into the cassette player.

"You know, Mother Goose wrote more mature rhymes than these guys," Sam said. "And we're talking about poems with 'hickory dickory dock' in them, Dean."

Dean rolled his eyes, turning up the stereo, but the light reflecting off the window couldn't hide the way he smiled.

People weren't just milling around in front of the movie theater when they walked up from the parking light; they were surging against each other, fighting to get into the line underneath the sizzling crackle of heat lamps. Charlotte followed Dean, inching their way through the mass of bodies towards the box office, and she curled her fingers around his wrist. Sam's breath was sharp, a tiny 'oh shit' in her ear when he grabbed onto Charlotte's arm before stumbling into her; both of them getting pushed up against Dean.

They managed to get inside the building unscathed.

She ended up sitting with Sam, squished together on a bench near one set of doors into the theater. They shared it with three other people, all of them waiting for the clean-up crew to pick up discarded popcorn and candy boxes. Dean waved at them like a moron from the snack line, not stopping until Sam grimaced in his direction and Charlotte raised her hand.

A blonde girl in a snowflake-covered sweater walked by, talking animatedly with her friends. Sam sat up straight – his chest puffing out like he was a bird getting ready to show off – but his smile faded when the girl passed them and didn't even look in his direction. His mouth quirked up when he noticed Charlotte was watching him. "That's Angie," Sam said when their eyes met.

"She's cute."

"Yeah." Sam shook his head sharply. "She ignores me unless I'm helping her with algebra. Because I'm a gimp. My leg is always giving out on me when I'm running in gym." Sam lowered his eyes, fists clenching on his thighs. "I'm not wearing the brace anymore…so I have to go to physical therapy." His voice was soft. "I don't want to be a gimp all of my life."

"My legs give out on me when I'm walking down the street," Charlotte answered, tapping his foot gently with her shoe. "And you're not a gimp, Sam. Physical therapy takes time."

"That's what Dean is always saying." Sam's knuckles were white. "But it's hard." Charlotte's throat ached, watching the pain flicker across his face, and she let her hand slip down to one of his fists. His entire body shivered when her fingers brushed against his knuckles. "He used to go with me during the summer," Sam added. "And he still calls me every night after I have a session, two times a week."

It didn't surprise her.

Charlotte closed her eyes, hearing Dean's whisper in the dark – how nothing in the world would keep him from setting things right after Sammy ended up bleeding on the asphalt, that there was nothing he wouldn't do to keep Sam from getting hurt like that again. She would never forget his voice, the way it growled to the moon, and his nails had left marks on her hips; small half circles that Dean noticed the next morning in the shower. He had traced them with his fingers, his eyes overflowing with an apology, until Charlotte grabbed his wrist and moved his hand lower; head already tilting back as she braced her other hand around his neck.

Another promise washing the fear away down the shower drain.

"Your brother is pretty damn amazing," she said gently. Charlotte stretched her legs, waiting for the burn in her calves before letting her feet drop back to the floor. She kept brushing Sam's knuckles as lightly as she could, listening to him breathe.

"I wish Dean didn't have to go back to school so soon."

"He would – " She lowered her head and the words poured out, the truth Charlotte had always known. "He would stay if you asked him."

"Yeah." He swallowed. "But it's not his fault that Dad's…hard." Sam dropped his voice down into its lowest register. "It's not working if it doesn't hurt, son." Sam's eyes darkened as he stared down at the floor. "Dad even yells at me about getting a haircut."

Sam bent over, lifting up the scruff of his hair. There was a pale stripe as wide as her thumb on the back of his head; Charlotte couldn't tell if it was from a surgery or from the two-by-four in the fight and she wasn't about to ask. "Like I'm getting a crew-cut just to show the whole school how ugly I am." He sat back up and glared at her like she was the girl who only saw Sam Winchester when he helped her with algebra.

"I'm pretty ugly, too." Charlotte lifted up the hem of her sweater, stopping when the skin around Sam's eyes turned as white as the scars. "I've just been hiding longer." She tipped her head, resting it on Sam's shoulder. "But your brother won't let me hide anymore. For a girl like me, that's…everything, Sam."

"He must have knocked you down pretty hard," Sam said. His hair tickled her nose when he chuckled.

"Maybe all heroes knock down chicks so they can rescue them." She glanced at him with a grin. "The next time Angie walks by, you should trip her and then pick up her books."

"_That'll_ score me points." Sam snorted.

"Just don't take her out for crappy nachos."

"Those crappy nachos _worked_, didn't they?" Dean demanded. He stood in front of them with an overloaded drink carrier and more snacks stuffed into his jacket than the three of them would ever be able to eat after Mary Winchester's Christmas ham. He started passing out food, handing a basket of nachos to Charlotte. "Girls just don't understand my true genius, Sammy."

"I think you're overestimating yourself by calling it genius," Sam retorted. He grabbed a box of popcorn out from underneath Dean's arm. "If the popcorn tastes like your armpit, I'm making you get us more."

"Did you forget who's taking you out to see a movie with real tits in it, Geek Boy?"

Even the people sitting on the bench with them couldn't keep a straight face when Dean asked the question.

"I've seen breasts before," Sam shot back. "You gave me your _Jugs_ collection when you went back to school." He rolled his eyes. "But I'm still trying to figure out why you left me sticky notes on the pictures about crap like nipple density. It's not like you're a breast expert."

The doors to the theater opened and Charlotte wobbled to her feet. "Because your brother is a real macho pervert," she said, shoving a nacho into her mouth to keep from laughing. Dean squared his shoulders and swaggered inside. "Nipple density?" she managed, poking Dean's back with a giggle that she couldn't stop.

"Laugh all you want, sweetheart, but there are things Sam needs to learn about boobs." Dean stopped and smirked at her over his shoulder. "And I don't ever hear you complaining about my _expertise_."

Charlotte blushed when other people laughed but she stepped in close enough to brush her lips against his.

"Jesus Christ," Sam hissed. "Now you're sucking face in public." He scooted past both of them to get into the theater.

He was waiting for them at the bottom of the steps, eyes tracking a blonde girl who was making her way up the other side of the theater. Sam took a deep breath and started up the steps, walking across the row to meet Angie halfway and ignoring Dean's fist pump as Angie looked up at Sam with a smile. Dean bellowed 'go for it, Sammy' when Angie gestured at the chair next to hers and Charlotte grabbed Dean by the wrist.

She pulled him up the stairs before he said something about Sam offering Angie some popcorn.

Charlotte picked a row that was far enough away to keep Dean from whispering tips during the movie but he still tried to say something during the previews, coughing 'hold her hand' into his fist loud enough for people sitting near them to turn their heads and stare. Sam ignored him completely, body bent towards Angie's while they whispered through the dancing candy and singing sodas marching their way across the screen.

She balanced the nachos on her lap and grabbed the collar of Dean's flannel shirt, tugging his mouth to hers. "You're the world's best brother," Charlotte murmured.

"And you're the world's hinkiest chick." Dean snorted when she raised her chin. "But I still fucking want you – especially when you taste like Cheez Whiz."

Dean swallowed up her laugh before anyone could hear it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was supposed to be a couple of Dean's friends drinking beer and watching movies on New Year's Eve but the living room was a riot of noise, alcohol and smoke.

Dean sat on the stairway looking into the room, trying to carry on a conversation that kept getting interrupted by a steady stream of boys who punched Dean on the shoulder and girls who smiled at him from underneath their eyelashes. Every time one of those girls walked away, Dean rolled his eyes and said something to Chris McDonald that made both of them laugh easy.

Chris had been introduced as Dean's best friend since the age of six but Dean had just called her _Charlotte_. She was the one always telling Maggie that the words weren't important, so it shouldn't have bothered her. Charlotte didn't need a public declaration but there had to have been some way he could have introduced her that didn't involve people staring at her like she was a freak of nature, the girl who walked into a party with Dean Winchester wearing an ankle-length skirt and a cardigan sweater.

And it hadn't helped overhearing three different girls talking about how they were going to be leaving in Dean Winchester's big black car. The blonde in the tight black dress didn't care that her voice carried, sneering at Charlotte with a red mouth splashed across her face like a scar when their eyes met.

_Did you see that prissy bitch he walked in with? He'll have to unlock her knees just to remove the stick._

At that point, she would have been happy being a friend of _Sam's_.

Charlotte scowled, staring into her red plastic cup, and choked it down. It tasted awful, flooding her head with every reason why she had only gone to one party in high school – cheap beer was disgusting, the music sucked and everyone screamed at each other when they weren't making out in dark corners.

If it were up to her, they would have left before she resorted to alcohol.

But Dean's smile every time their eyes met was full of _home_ and it wasn't fair to steal that from him just because she hated parties. She kept guzzling down beer, refilling her cup whenever she needed more, and smiled back.

A warm glow spread through her belly, taking the sting out of being called 'a frigid cunt' or 'Dean's charity case' – and the haze in her brain dulled the ache behind her eyes, let her keep a smile on her face while she watched a giggling parade of girls march past Dean. Charlotte could even swallow old pretzels that burst into dust when she chewed, ignoring the way her stomach hurt every time that blonde girl smirked at her.

She was on her third handful when a goth girl wearing a Miranda Sex Garden t-shirt sat down next to her on the couch. The girl looked just as miserable as Charlotte felt, picking at her plaid miniskirt with chipped black nails.

Charlotte sucked in a breath. "Cool band," she said, gesturing at the girl's t-shirt with her cup. The girl looked at Charlotte like she was a two-headed alien

"You heard of them?"

Charlotte didn't realize she was holding her breath until she exhaled. "I like th' Medieval Baebes, too."

"I'm Tina." The goth girl's mouth twisted into a grin. "Tina McDonald."

"Charlotte Webb," she answered, automatically holding out her hand. Tina stared at it with one raised eyebrow before Charlotte set it back on her lap and looked down at her shoes.

Even when she was drunk, she was the world's biggest dork.

"So who would have thought that Dean Winchester would waltz into a party with a girl who listens to the Baebes?" Tina chuckled. She cocked her head in Dean's direction. "Bet you weren't expecting a reunion of Dean's closest high school buddies when he sweet talked you into coming to a New Year's Eve party?"

"I was expectin'_Holy Grail_." Charlotte's face thawed just enough for a real smile. "Or Mel Brooks."

"_Spaceballs_ was my suggestion." Tina snorted. "But Chris decided that Dean needed an old school blow out. Like they're going to need to relive their Glory Days before they turn twenty." Her eyes narrowed when the blonde in the black dress sidled up to Dean. "Amy Clark's been waiting for a week just to get her claws back into Dean."

Amy Clark's smile was softened by the blush on her cheeks when she wrapped long fingers around Dean's forearm. Charlotte's belly lurched – there was something unearthly in that smile. Temptation and bright enchantments wrapped up with a pretty French manicure, clothes that hugged every curve and high heels that would have had Charlotte on the floor in ten seconds.

"She's kinda pretty," Charlotte managed, watching perfect teeth bite into Amy's lower lip.

"She's as pretty as a piranha once she rips your balls off."

Amy's hand clamped around Dean's arm and she tugged at it with a laugh. Dean frowned, standing up and saying something that turned Amy's smile into a snarl, and Charlotte's jaw clenched.

Charlotte Anne Webb was sick to death of _watching_.

"It was nice talkin' t' you," she said to Tina, pushing herself into a stand.

Charlotte tripped across the floor as gracefully as she could with the walls spinning around her. Sharp laughs pierced through her head and the bass line shuddered up her legs but the only thing she had to do was stay upright long enough to pitch forward onto Dean's chest.

Amy Clark was still holding onto Dean's arm when Charlotte tilted her head up and slammed her mouth against his, flannel bunched into her hands to keep herself steady.

"What the _fuck_!" Amy's voice was a screech above the music. "Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Th' prissy _bitch_ goin' home wi' Dean Winchester." Charlotte glared over her shoulder. Amy's entire face turned red, twisting into another sneer when Charlotte slipped an arm around Dean's neck. "You're just lucky I don' like makin' a scene. I wanna pull out my _stick _and lay the smackdown on you."

Amy let go of Dean and started mouthing words that Charlotte couldn't hear over the screaming silence that slashed across the empty spaces between them. The ringing in her ears followed the heat roaring underneath her skin and a flush spread from the top of her head down to her toes. The walls stopped spinning long enough for the white spots dancing in her peripheral vision to turn into people's faces.

She was the center of everyone's attention and she didn't fucking care.

Not even when the walls sped up and her legs turned to jelly and the only thing keeping her upright when her knees buckled out from underneath her were two arms tight around her waist. She was tucked against Dean, all earth and leather and _safe_. The music stretched into a throb that matched the beat of her pulse, fingers tangling in his hair as she pulled his mouth down onto hers.

She sank onto her heels, catching her breath as the music snapped back into real-time, and touched his lips with one hand.

"I want t' leave now," she said.

Charlotte grabbed him by the wrist and stumbled towards the front hallway, jerking Dean forward every time her boots caught on the hem of her skirt. He leaned her up against the wall and she managed not to fall down while Dean rummaged through the closet, handing coats to Chris. When Dean pulled her hat down over her ears, he didn't even smile.

Chris McDonald held the door open for them.

A gust of wind whipped hair into her face while Charlotte slipped her hands into her mittens. "Thank you for invitin' me," she said, holding out her hand. "It was nice meetin' you, Chris."

"Uh…" Chris stared down at her hand and flashed another surprised look over her shoulder at Dean, some obscure message that she didn't understand, before Chris sucked in a breath. "It was nice meeting you, too," he added, shaking her hand.

Charlotte shook when Chris let go, her stomach spinning counterclockwise.

"That's our cue, dude." Dean slipped an arm across her shoulders. "Tell your folks 'Happy New Year' for me."

"You, too."

Chris closed the door and Charlotte blinked. The porch light refracted off of her glasses and pushed right into the back of her skull. She shivered when they made it to the sidewalk, leaning against Dean as she trudged through a small drift. Her boots crunched in the snow and it was so cold that her lungs hurt, like some monster was cracking open her rib cage and replacing every gasp of air with ice crystals.

She listened to Dean's footsteps while they walked to his car.

"Hey," he said finally, making her stop underneath a street lamp. "I should have..." Dean's voice trailed off as Charlotte twisted to face him. "I mean, after Thanksgiving…"

"It wasn' just her, Dean." The words spilled out before she could stop them and Charlotte had to look away from his face because her entire chest was going to burst open if she kept watching him, the way his eyes tore a hole right through her with an apology that was never his to make. "People said I was your _charity_ case." She rubbed underneath her glasses, wiping tear drops away before he could see them fall. "Said I was a frigid cu – "

He pulled her in close and she started gasping like a dying fish against his chest, breathing in_Dean_ along with the frozen air. Her legs trembled as another shiver trailed up her spine and Charlotte pushed away from him as soon as her stomach muscles started contracting, falling to her knees in the snow.

But she still managed to get vomit on his shoes.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She threw up two more times on the way back to the Winchesters' house, leaning out the door of the Impala while Dean rubbed circles on her back.

Dean snuck her into the house through the back door, avoiding the walk of shame through the living room where Sam and ten of his closest friends were watching _Star Wars_ movies. They were hollering and laughing and quoting dialogue at each other, loud enough to give her a headache, and John was whooping it up right along with them.

He never got any of the quotes wrong.

Mary was in the kitchen, pouring a bag of Doritos into a bowl, when Charlotte tripped to the sink behind Dean. She didn't look up immediately, humming to herself while Dean handed Charlotte glasses of water – but when her eyes focused on Charlotte's stringy hair and pink face, Mary gave Dean the bowl.

She led Charlotte up the stairs to her room. Charlotte collapsed on the bed, waiting for Mary to yell or get angry or call her a bad girl for coming home drunk with her son, but Mary's voice was soft when she murmured 'it's alright' and took Charlotte into her arms.

It wasn't the same as being held by Alma, who believed in hugs the same way she believed in moonshine, but Mary Winchester made Charlotte feel like she was sitting on the big swing out on the front porch listening to the cicadas.

It was enough space to breathe.

"Mrs. Winchester? 'm sorry," she whispered into Mary's shoulder. "Didn' mean t' embarrass Dean. Brings me home for Christmas and his mama has t' take care of me 'cause I drank _beer_." Her cheeks flushed. "An' I puked on his shoes."

Mary's arms tightened and she gave a small laugh. "How many times do I have to tell you that Mrs. Winchester is my mother-in-law?" She brushed Charlotte's hair with one hand. "Why don't you go clean yourself up? I'll go make you some chamomile tea."

Charlotte nodded, squeezing Mary as hard as she could before leaning down to untie her boots. Her throat hurt when Mary stopped at the door to look back at her with Dean's eyes – another Winchester picking her up when she fell.

She trudged down the hall to the bathroom, a robe hanging over her arm and her toiletry kit in her hand. The walls were spinning slower than a merry-go-round, twirling to the "March of the Imperial Stormtroopers" while her stomach roiled to a crawl – but every scream from downstairs blasted through her head with a ricochet that made the space behind her eyes throb.

Even her teeth ached.

And she had vomit in her hair.

Charlotte grimaced at herself in the mirror, brushing her teeth as hard as she could before following it up with three chasers of mouthwash. She brushed her teeth a second time, cold fingers curled around her toothbrush, until her mouth didn't taste like it was full of beer and pretzels and bile.

Two more glasses of water, sipped slowly while Charlotte closed her eyes, made her feel human.

The walls had stopped spinning when she slipped out of her clothes and stepped into the tub.

The water from the shower chased away the chill in her toes, swirling down the drain along with the shampoo that was rinsing out of her hair, but it couldn't do much with the memory of Amy Clark's sneer. Charlotte swallowed, pressing her palms against the warm tiles. When she closed her eyes, she could smell _Dean – _could hear him grumbling about how it was impossible for such a scrawny chick to have so much hair when she worked the conditioner through the strands.

The guest room was empty when she shut the door behind her, a chorus of boys' voices reading off the beginning of _The Empire Strikes Back_ together while a laugh that sounded like Dean's roared over them all.

There was a sharp knock on her door.

"Come in," Charlotte said softly, sitting on the edge of her bed. Her toes were pink against the carpet and she couldn't even raise her head to look at Mary Winchester when the smell of chamomile wafted slowly through the room. She was too embarrassed, between bawling into Mary's shoulder and covering Dean's _mother_ with the vomit in her hair.

At least there wouldn't have been anyone at home to smell her if she had decided to sneak into her daddy's liquor cabinet.

Charlotte lifted her eyes when she heard the click of the lock.

Dean grinned at her with a mug of tea in his hands. "Mom said I have to make you drink this," he said, handing her the cup. "And I'm not supposed to leave until you're done."

"It's not warm anymore."

"That's because you washed your hair. And I bet you even used conditioner."

Her hands were freezing. Dean sat down next to her but the heat in her belly as the mattress dipped from his weight didn't spread to her fingers. Charlotte listened to him breathe as she took a sip from the mug; cold liquid slid down her throat but there wasn't a rumble in her belly as it settled into her stomach.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"The party." She sucked in a breath. "I didn' mean t' embarrass you by bein' a jerk." Charlotte glanced at him, waiting for him to say something, but all he did was watch her. "Or puke on your shoes."

"It was bound to happen eventually," he returned lightly. "I mean, between the salsa, sweet and sour sauce, hot chocolate, pizza and Coke." Dean ticked them off on his fingers, bumping her shoulder with his when she actually laughed. The mug tipped in her hands, tea pouring right onto his lap.

"Oh, God." Charlotte started rubbing at the spill with the edge of her robe while Dean set the mug on the night stand. "I'm sorry."

"I look like a baby pissed on my lap." Dean snorted. "Aren't you going to help me out of my jeans right here and now, Charlotte Webb?" He stood up, chuckling when her eyes widened, and shucked out of his boxers along with his jeans. "Might as well fix my shirt, too, before you drool on it or something," Dean added, pulling his t-shirt up over his head.

"But your dad said…we're supposed t' stay in our own rooms."

It didn't even keep his _socks_ from ending up on top of his jeans.

"My dad also said to not to drink at Chris' party but that didn't keep you from downing your body weight in Budweiser." He lifted her face to his, a hand on her chin, and smiled. "You're just lucky that my mom likes you. She's going to kick my ass if I don't bring you downstairs for breakfast." Dean's smile widened into a grin. "We're having lots of greasy bacon and we're going to eat it out of dirty ashtrays and – " Her toes connected with his shin. "Hey!"

"You're th' world's biggest prick." Charlotte traced a finger down his length, staring right into his eyes as his breath came out in a hiss. "An' you're just lucky I don' have a headache."

"You brush your teeth?"

"Twice," she murmured, her entire body blushing when Dean laughed.

Dean untied her robe, watching it fall down her arms and pool around her hands before easing her backwards against the mattress; his thighs settled on either side of hers and his hands suddenly clutched the comforter along with her hair. He studied her with eyes that tore another hole through her chest, both of them swirling in a phantom wind blowing as cold as the one underneath the street light.

" Charlotte?"

"Yes?"

"You're not…" Dean swallowed. "You're not anything they said…"

When his mouth brushed against her collarbone, tongue flicking out against the pulse at the base of her neck, she believed him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He didn't want a big production, protesting when Charlotte scratched his belly and sang 'happy birthday' with an off-key warble that made Dean whine about his eardrums bursting from the pressure, but he didn't complain when she rolled him onto his back. Her mouth trailed down his chest and Dean shivered when the tracks of her hair followed in its wake. His breath hitched when she got to 'dear Dean' and licked the hollow where his hip curved into his thigh, hands fisted in her hair when she finished with one tiny kiss and a 'to you' tacked onto the end.

She didn't complain, either, when Dean's hand followed one white scar between her thighs. Charlotte's back arched as his fingers flicked against her. "Happy birthday to me," he murmured into her neck. She wanted to stay tangled with him, warm underneath her comforter – pulse to pulse while they rocked together and tiny little moans bubbled out of her with every thrust, sweat-slick skin sliding across goose bumps while her fingers scratched down his back and he whispered ' Charlotte' like she was a holy thing.

But Rich and everyone else in Dean's kick-boxing club had their own plans.

And she was an accomplice.

Dean thought they were going to Rich and Andrea's apartment for a dinner party, goddamn fancy food that they were all too freaking young to eat. Dinner was actually five different kinds of pizza – every single flavor was something that Dean said was his favorite – and enough snacks to feed a small army. The party was Rich's collection of_Sleepaway Camp _and presents sitting off to the side of the couch, wrapped in everything from brown paper bags to left-over Christmas wrapping paper.

His friends popped out from behind chairs and couches and other rooms in the apartment the moment Rich led them into the living room, a cacophony of voices and happy faces.

"Surprise!"

"I'm taking each one of you out," Dean mumbled, scratching underneath his ear.

Rich snorted. "You can put your money where your mouth is tomorrow, Winchester." He picked up a can of soda out of an ice bucket and tossed it towards Dean. "Now shut up and sit down."

Dean snatched the can in mid-air before he pulled Charlotte down to the floor next to him, both of them leaning up against the couch while he slipped an arm around her shoulders. He chuckled when Jinks, Rich's scruffy tabby cat, took up residence on Charlotte's lap and kneaded her belly with a purr that vibrated through both of them. The cat hissed and ran across the room when Dean flipped open the tab on his soda and Dr. Pepper sprayed all three of them.

"Shit." Dean wiped his hand on his jeans, watching soda drip down the can. "You okay?"

"Turnabout is fair play, right?" Charlotte giggled when Dean's mouth quirked up. "The way I see it, we're not even until you vom – " He started kissing her, tongue darting past her lips, and she entangled her fingers in his hair despite the slow burn creeping up her cheeks when popcorn started pelting her arms. "Just make sure they're not the purple boots," she whispered against his lips. "Jimmy gave me those for Christmas."

"Are you two going to watch the movie or not?" Vic demanded.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Dean retorted. "It's my goddamn birthday, dude." He swallowed what was left of his Dr. Pepper, burping as he threw the can into a nearby garbage can. "Where the hell is the remote?"

Charlotte spent most of the movie staring through her fingers, jumping whenever someone died and burying her head in Dean's chest. "You're such a chick," he murmured, tightening his arm during the end credits. "Can't even watch one horror movie without cringing and you made me sit through that Shakespeare crap with my eyes wide open. _Twice_."

She laughed, blinking and stretching her arms when Andrea walked into the room with a brightly lit birthday cake. Charlotte mouthed the words until Dean poked her in the stomach and not one person cared that Charlotte sounded like she was strangling Jinks while she sang.

Presents were passed out along with pieces of chocolate cake and Dean snorted when he ripped newspaper off of the latest copy of _Jugs_ and Charlotte poked him in the stomach with a crack about nipple density. She loved watching him open presents because the smallest things lit up his face, an old tape from a used music store or a t-shirt with funny slogans on it.

Charlotte saved her present for last.

His mouth twitched when Charlotte handed him an envelope. Dean ripped it open, pulling out two shiny tickets with _The Masters of Metal_ printed in gold relief on them. His eyes widened when he realized what the gold letters meant, fingers brushing against the 'Backstage Pass' at the bottom of the ticket. Dean gently put them back into what was left of the envelope, setting it on top of his pile of presents, but he wouldn't look at her.

_Crap._

"Is it okay?" Charlotte worked her lip with her teeth. She should have waited until they were alone because Dean didn't need her daddy thrown into his face while his friends ate cake. She was an idiot. Charlotte swallowed, placing a hand on his arm. "I know how much you like Metallica and there are other bands there from your shoebox and…I think it's the only way you're going to ever meet my daddy."

"_Okay_? You got me fucking backstage passes to a Metallica concert and you're worried about it being _okay_?" Dean finally looked at her like she was crazy. "Jesus Christ, Charlotte. You're the coolest – " He slammed his mouth down on top of hers and Charlotte wrapped her arms around his neck, locking them tight at the elbow.

They didn't stop kissing, even when someone dumped an entire bowl of popcorn over their heads.

* * *

A/N: 

MapQuest has been an online presence since 1996. As this story takes place in 1998, it is entirely feasible that our anal-retentive heroine would have, in fact, prepared a travel map in advance.

The quote in the scene where Dean and Charlotte drive to Lawrence is Iron Maiden's "The Wicker Man." I modified the song lyrics just a teensy bit to make it reference the Winchesters (brothers and their father) instead of the original "brothers and their fathers."

I did attempt to research the actual street on which the Winchesters lived while in Lawrence and came up with nothing. While I was sorely tempted to use the irrepressible quellefromage's suggestion of Hotass Avenue, it wasn't as authentic as I wanted the name to sound – resulting in my use of a street on which my husband used to live because it wasn't boring. Besides, I couldn't resist using a name that referenced Herne the Hunter.

I love the idea of John and Mary growing up in the same neighborhood, knowing each other before John left for Vietnam – hence my decision to do so in this story. It's not like I haven't used this trope before in _By Gaslight_ or anything… ;-P

If you've never listened to Miranda Sex Garden or The Medieval Baebes, you really should.

Chris McDonald was originally going to be Chris Kane…but it occurred to me that Chris Kane was a real person and would have broken some of the flow of the story. I felt odd making Lindsey McDonald one of Dean's friends from high school and, since I didn't want to tag the story with cross-over on top of everything else, Chris McDonald was my compromise.

Being the research geek that I am, I actually found a calendar for January 1999 and discovered that Dean's 20th birthday takes place on a Sunday. Not only was it cute for Charlotte to wake Dean up with sex and a song, it was also canon based on what I established in _The time I like is the rush hour_. Do it with me: \0/

The _Sleepaway Camp_ series are some of the silliest horror movies I have even been forced to watch and the over-the-top ending for the first movie still makes me snort whenever I hear the phrase "She's a he!"


	3. I'm waiting for ignition

**Any Chance Collision  
**

Georgetown was the next step in the plan but her daddy was always telling her that life could turn on a dime. If the trick was learning how to dance, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** The Winchester boys aren't mine but I'd make Dean wear his boots all the time if they were. 

**Overall Rating**: M (Language, Angst, Sex)

**Overall Pairings**: Dean/OFC (HET)

**Author's Notes**: This is a remix of _Always Falling_.

**Miscellaneous**: No spoilers for the show but this is unabashedly AU.

**Betas: ****embroiderama** and **quirkies**

* * *

_**Part Three: I'm waiting for ignition  
**_

Somewhere between making chocolate chip cookies and _Shakespeare in Love_, Charlotte had become Sam Winchester's secret key to a heart-shaped box.

He called her one night when Dean was at kick-boxing practice, overflowing with questions about Angie Delucca that Charlotte couldn't answer.

She couldn't tell Sam that she had never been that normal girl, the one who needed help with algebra and giggled over chocolate pudding at lunch. Sam didn't know that Charlotte was the girl who hid in libraries, eating sandwiches stuffed with so much strawberry jam that she spent most afternoons wearing her uniform sweater just to cover up the stains.

It was too late to stop the conversation when Dean came back early, falling down onto her bed and pulling Charlotte into the crook of his arm.

The only thing harder than talking to Sam about girls was the way Dean's body jerked when he heard Sam on the other end of the line but his arms relaxed and Dean chuckled into her hair when Charlotte mentioned her paper on the philosophy of John Lennon.

Everything would have been okay if she was a normal girl, a girl who could give the right answer instead of saying something stupid.

Charlotte swallowed past the ache when Sam started screaming about how being Dean Winchester's younger brother sucked loud enough for his older brother to make out the words. Sam didn't stop, yelling about how he was sick of proving himself to the younger sisters of all the girls Dean screwed in high school. When Dean's entire body tensed against her back, Charlotte ducked off of the bed before he ripped the handset right out of her hands.

The phone line was too small to contain each sentence that Sam hurled at her, roaring about promises and rings and the bimbos that Dean would _fuck_ instead of real girls, a truth that made Charlotte's heart pound even when the words 'not every girl needs a ring to make a promise' dropped from her lips like stones.

It was Maggie's refrain all over again, spilling out of the mouth of a shaggy-haired boy in high school.

_Words are important, Charlie-bean._

"Sam," Charlotte said, her voice keeping time with the throbbing at her temples. "It's not fair that people judge you because of your brother." Dean's head whipped in her direction, eyes narrowed into slits. "But – "

It was another wrong answer, reducing Sam to a shout that was so loud Charlotte couldn't even make out the words.

Charlotte waited until Sam took a breath and sighed. "It's hard when people don't understand you." She could feel Dean's eyes scratch into her back while she paced in front of her desk. "But if that girl won't give you the time of day because of a stupid ring, she's not worth it," she added. "And that has nothing to do with your brother."

Sam slammed down the receiver, his screams replaced by the buzzing dial tone.

Dean smirked at her, hopping off of her bed like it belonged to him. "Well," he said. "You showed him."

_Did you see that prissy bitch he walked in with? He'll have to unlock her knees just to remove the stick. _

"Don't even start, Dean!" Charlotte twitched as he put his arms around her, shoulder jerking up into his chin when he tried to nuzzle into her neck.

"What the hell?"

"That party you took me to on New Year's Eve?" It all made sense with Sam's words swirling around in her head, all of the looks and every single comment about the librarian girl in her clunky boots and old-fashioned glasses. Maybe none of it mattered and maybe it would hurt even more after she asked the question but she had to know. Charlotte took a deep breath. "How many of those girls did you…"

"Screw in high school?" Dean shrugged his shoulders. "A lot of them."

"Oh."

Charlotte started shaking, closing her eyes when Dean flipped up Tina McDonald's plaid skirt and brought his mouth down on pale white thighs; not one scar peeked through his fingers like crazy latticework when he opened Tina's thighs and sucked through her white cotton panties. Charlotte swallowed when Dean pulled down the low neckline of Amy Clark's dress, mouth encircling one of her perfect pink nipples on a perfectly tanned breast while his big hands inched the dress past her perfectly smooth abdomen.

She shook her head sharply.

"It's not like I kept a scorecard," Dean snapped, his voice just as sharp as his little brother's had been right before he hung up on her. There was nothing soft in his eyes or the lines of his face, just a hard crease between his eyebrows from the scowl. "And it's not like you're all pure and stuff to be judging me."

"I'm not – "

"Yeah?" Dean glared at her, folding his arms across his chest with a twitch in his cheek. "You're telling me you can answer that same question."

"Two," she replied immediately. Dean's eyes widened like she had slapped him but she had never been the girl that some hot guy screwed in the back of his car for three hours. She had never been a quickie in the bathroom at a party full of idiots drinking and screaming and listening to goddamn classic rock. "Including you."

And she had never felt more like a freak.

"Oh." Something like an apology shimmered across his face until their eyes met and his darkened. "And why the hell were you talking with Sam behind my back."

"Behind your back?" She sounded more like a fishwife the longer Dean glared at her. "You were in the room"

"Still didn't give you any right to talk to my little brother."

"I didn't know I needed permission to talk to someone. So when your mom calls I should just tell her that you don't want me talking to anyone in your family and hang up? You're such a prick!"

"Sounds to me like you were butting in between two brothers."

"Sam called me, Dean!"

"I don't know why." His face contorted into a twisted version of itself and Charlotte's mouth went dry. "Pushy chick like you? Always giving your opinion about what I should do or how I should act. What the hell does it matter who I screwed in high school? I don't even remember half of their names!"

It was Miles' refrain all over again, spilling out of the mouth that had kissed every scar.

_I should have just fucked you, Charlotte. No one wants a girlfriend who's a pushy little bitch._

"Is that what you really think about me?" Charlotte tried to make her voice sound strong, tried to make it sound like he hadn't just ripped her heart out and stomped on it, but she had never been able to hide anything from Dean. "That I'm pushy?"

"Hell, yeah!"

"Well, you're just a real _catch_, aren't you?"

All those months of pretending he was something else and Dean Winchester turned out to be another Miles Kincaid, another snake shedding his skin right after he bit her. He had no right looking like she had stabbed him in the gut just by turning on her heel. Watching him was like cutting off slow strips of skin just to see if she could still bleed.

"Why do you keep coming back?" Charlotte asked.

"Fuck if I know," Dean muttered, grabbing his book bag and slamming the door behind him.

Charlotte didn't even wait for him to stomp down the hall before picking up the picture Mary Winchester had taken of them on New Year's Day, huddled around each other and a big bowl of popcorn while they watched _The Goonies_,and whipping it into the wall. The glass fell to pieces along with the frame and she was crying over some idiot, huge sobs pouring out of her because some jerk had made her believe that she was someone she wasn't – someone who wouldn't get left behind for a tour, someone who was fucking cute.

Someone who was worth a promise.

"I wish I had never met you, Dean Winchester."

She could still hear him in the hallway, slow footsteps shuffling on carpet. Alma would chase her through the house with more than a frying pan if Charlotte Anne Webb didn't tell Dean Winchester exactly where he could go and precisely what he could do to himself once he got there. Charlotte stormed across the room and flung open her door.

There was a hitch in his shoulders that matched her own, heavy and shaky, and Charlotte remembered how to breathe.

There was only one place she wanted him to be.

And there was only one thing she wanted him to do once he got there.

Charlotte grabbed Dean by the arm and pulled him into the room. His book bag fell to the floor when he kicked the door shut. Dean didn't lock it, just looked over his shoulder to make certain it was closed before he pushed Charlotte backwards onto the bed.

The mattress bounced when she slammed into it. Dean popped open the button on her jeans and the metallic rip of the zipper echoed through the room. Charlotte tried to grab the hem of his sweatshirt but Dean had her jeans and panties hanging off of her knees and she bent backwards like a bow with a tiny 'fuck' when his tongue brushed against her, thighs quivering as the pulse and rush sped through her pelvis.

Charlotte was already groaning and clutching the comforter when he started using his fingers.

"You like that?" he asked, a low vibration rumbling from between her thighs and into her belly.

He didn't wait for her answer, just used his full lips with a suck that made her moan. Dean's fingers were a slip and slide followed by another groan and she was soaring – bucking up into his face, her back arching as her eyes rolled up into her head. She overflowed against his mouth, every shattered piece of ' Charlotte' put back together where salt met skin.

Dean stood up with a chuckle, staring down at her with a bite to his lip and a shake of his head.

Charlotte smiled up at him. "My turn," she said, fingers curling into the waistband of his sweats and boxers. Dean was hard and he was the one groaning when Charlotte drew him into her mouth slow inch by slow inch. Her tongue swirled and her head bobbed and his hands fisted in her hair, a sigh and a shiver until he pushed her down onto the bed.

"I'm going to fuck you now, Charlotte Webb." Dean knelt between her legs, eyes dark.

"Just try and keep the hell up, Dean Winchester," she shot back, lifting her hips.

There was nothing to do but hold on as they crashed into each other, throwing her head back as she swelled around him. Charlotte was soaring but it wasn't enough to fly, want and desire and need burning through her until she begged – 'harder, fuck you, harder' and 'all those girls and you can't fuck me any faster' roaring out of her, hips swaying up into his with a rough sob and a spasm. She was shrieking, nails digging into his ass, and Dean pounded into her faster than a jackhammer; shattering her into pieces all over again with a ' Charlotte' screamed into her mouth.

Both of her neighbors pounded on the wall in time to his pulse beating inside of her.

"We should fight more often," he murmured into her neck. "You're pretty hot when you're pissed." Dean chuckled low in his throat. "All those girls and you can't fuck me any faster?"

Her entire body burned, one long flush filled with the echo of her screams. "It's not very _nice_ to make fun of me," Charlotte whispered, hitching up to kiss Dean on the nose.

"Make fun of you? I'll fight with you every day if I can get fucked like that." He snorted. "And no girl who taunts me by mentioning all of the other chicks I banged while I'm screwing her has any business telling me I'm not _nice_."

"Lucky for you," she retorted. "I think the odds are good that we'll fight again if we continue this thing."

Dean's eyes widened as soon as Charlotte's jaw snapped shut.

_Crap!_

"We just had freaking hot make-up sex," Dean said softly. Her heart started beating against her rib cage, a rush so loud in her veins that she wondered why Dean couldn't hear it. "I think that makes this more than a thing," he added.

"Wait." The words tumbled around in her brain. "Are you saying you're my boyfriend?"

"Seems to me that you just said that." Dean's hands slipped off her hips and curled around her backside. "Not complaining because you did."

"Oh." Charlotte shivered when Dean tightened his hands. "I didn't have much luck with my other boyfriend." She wrinkled her nose, waiting for the litany, but Miles Kincaid was no longer giving speeches in her head. "He was a jerk."

"Worse than me?"

He had replaced everything Miles Kincaid had ever told her with whispers in the dark, with lips and fingers and the way his body surged against hers, but Dean still looked at her like the answer should have been 'no' – and that hurt so much that all Charlotte could do was laugh. "You apologize a lot better than he did," she said.

"Well, the only girlfriend I've had apologizes pretty damn good."

Dean's mouth quirked up into a shy smile that meant everything – all those girls and Charlotte had been the first in the only way that mattered. Normal girls like Maggie would never understand why Dean Winchester was worth every promise, the beautiful boy who glued a broken girl back together.

Charlotte poked him in the stomach. "I think I'm the only one who knows how cheesy you are underneath that leather jacket, Dean Winchester," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck with a laugh. "But your secret's safe with me."

The phone rang when they started making up all over again, Sam's apology a soft murmur on the answering machine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Fingers rubbed her temples, cool against the skin, and her eyes fluttered open.

Charlotte stared up at the green ceiling, focusing on the white stars and glow-in-the-dark Saturn stickers that peppered the surface. Ruben, Dean's roommate, had slapped them up there one night during freshman year and Charlotte might have smiled at the memory of Dean's cackle when he told the story – but there was a stitch in her side and the room smelled too sweet, like she was rolling a gumdrop in her mouth.

Dean's back flickered into her peripheral vision, his entire body hunched as he whispered into a phone, and suddenly Maggie's eyes were looking down into hers. "Oh, Charlie-bean," she murmured, helping Charlotte sit up. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have…"

Maggie had burst into the cafeteria with a wild look in her eyes, interrupting Jimmy and Charlotte in mid-argument about the Hero's Quest in _Star Wars_. Dean showed up from out of nowhere, a wet towel in his hand, when Maggie leaned onto the table.

_Your dad was in an accident. I just heard about it on the news but it's supposed to be pretty bad. _

"It's okay," Charlotte returned softly but she couldn't hide the hiccup at the end. She focused on Maggie's hand rubbing her back, slow circles as Charlotte tried to keep her breathing steady. Jimmy's arm was around her shoulders, pulling her in close so she could curl into his chest, and she knew that she couldn't close her eyes.

Charlotte didn't want to see her daddy's red car slam into a semi-truck or slide onto the other side of the highway, wheels hanging off the median as cars crashed into it one by one.

Dean turned as soon as he heard Charlotte's voice, his face just as white as the hand around the phone he was holding. "She's awake now, sir," he said, handing Charlotte the headset. "It's your father."

She couldn't keep her hands from shaking, couldn't keep her stomach from blowing into freefall – especially when Dean touched her cheek and Jimmy rested his head on top of hers. Charlotte swallowed. "Daddy?"

"It's alright, baby girl."

Charlotte exhaled when she heard his voice. "The news said it was a bad accident. Are you really okay?"

"I'm fine." Her daddy laughed, a low chuckle that settled deep in her chest and made Charlotte feel like she was sitting at home in front of the fireplace. "Madeline wrapped my car around a tree. She walked away with some cuts and bruises but the car is totaled, right along with my leg. Broke it in two different places." He snorted. "We're going to have to pull out of the tour."

"What happened to Roberta?"

"We parted ways last month…" His voice trailed off suddenly and he coughed. "This boy of yours. He's the same one since Thanksgiving, isn't he? How long has it been?"

"Since September, Daddy."

"How in the hell did I raise a girl who can hold on to a relationship longer than I can?"

"Because only an idiot wouldn't hold onto him as long as he lets her," Charlotte answered. "And I wasn't raised to be an idiot." Dean jerked, scratching under his ear and looking at the wall before Jimmy and Maggie could see the slow smile creeping onto his face. "Can I come to the hospital?"

"I've already been released." He sighed. "Maddy and I are heading to France to rest and recuperate. I'd bring you with us but…"

"I've got mid-terms." It came out harder than she intended, every syllable clipped. Charlotte closed her eyes, seeing the ghost in the planes of her daddy's face – the one that watched her every time Daddy said 'you look so much like your mother' before kissing her forehead.

Charlotte heard his jaw clench over the phone line and it didn't surprise her when he changed the subject.

"I want you and this Dean to have fun at the show," Daddy said. "I'm setting you both up in a nice place for the weekend and I'm not taking no for an answer." He sucked in a breath. "You stay happy, baby girl. I'll call you in a couple of days once we get settled. Love you."

"Love you, Dad – "

Charlotte dropped her hand into her lap when she heard dial tone, still clutching the handset. Jimmy looked at Maggie over her head when Dean gently pried Charlotte's fingers from the plastic, both of them white-faced, but Charlotte was used to the empty spaces where words ached.

"You know, Dean was amazing." Maggie coughed into her hand, eyes flickering between Charlotte and Dean as she tried to cover up the silence when Dean set the handset back into its cradle and didn't turn around. "He went down a list of numbers, yelling at whoever answered, until he reached your dad." Maggie's hand stopped rubbing her back. "And I think it's time we make a dignified and subtle exit."

Jimmy snorted. "Because we couldn't have just said 'night' and walked out the door or anything." He stood up and reached a hand out to Maggie, pulling her to her feet. "Let's go, Mistress of Subtle."

"Screw you, Durante," Maggie snapped back as they stepped into the hall.

Dean sat down next to her on the bed, hands on either side of his hips, while she stared at the floor. "You okay?" he asked softly.

"No." Charlotte looked at him through the fall of her hair, brushing it back behind her ear. It was tacky against her fingers. "He loves me, Dean, but there are days when he can't stand being near me. I remind him of her." Charlotte's eyes burned and she looked back down at the floor. "All those songs about fire? Every single one is about my mama, how he died the night she burned." She blinked and sniffed her hand. It smelled like gumdrops.

"Didn't they break up?"

"Daddy says that you can't choose who you love or how much you do any more than you can make her stay with you." Charlotte sighed. "So he goes through a new girlfriend every couple of months trying to forget her." Charlotte scooted backwards onto the bed, leaning against the wall and stretching out her legs. "And sometimes you can't make your daddy want you to stay no matter how much you love him."

Dean leaned back on his elbow and watched her, the skin too tight around his eyes.

"I…" Dean's mouth twisted. "Sometimes I think my dad's glad that I leave." He shook his head sharply. "Only time he ever acted proud of me in years was when I nearly killed a kid." Charlotte pulled Dean forward, resting his head on her lap and brushing his hair. "How fucked is that, Charlotte?"

"Don't you work in the garage every summer?"

"Because of_Mom_. Not that Dad doesn't need the help and he's always telling me I need the discipline."

"Oh."

Dean twisted his head to look up at her, shadows in his eyes. Charlotte swallowed – Alma always said that even the best of families had secrets, things hidden underneath the skin that no amount of wishing could ever fix. John Winchester loved his son as much as Aaron Webb loved his daughter but words were harder to ignore when they were paired with disappointed sighs and lost aspirations scratched into hard smiles.

"He's going to shit when I declare my major. I mean, architecture?" Dean snorted. "Dad thinks I should teach P.E."

It was another secret whispered in the dark – the way he loved to make things with his hands, feeling the burn in his muscles when he used a hammer and nails to raise a wall or put shingles on a roof. Dean wanted to build something real, to design houses strong enough to protect people from the wind and the weather. Dean wanted to build people _homes_.

Charlotte loved Dean for that as much as she loved him for being a big brother, as much as she loved him for always wanting her to stay, but he wouldn't listen to one word – not even from the girl who never wanted him to leave. Dean would just snort and ask the ceiling what he had done wrong to end up with a walking chick flick.

"I…" She swallowed, pushing her glasses back on top of her nose. The only pictures of girls with big breasts and skimpy clothes were on Ruben's side of the room. "You've changed the décor." Charlotte giggled when his eyes widened. "Ruben's going to be pissed when he realizes you've taken down the latest _Jugs_ centerfold."

"That's because there's nothing sexier than a girl with lime jello in her hair, especially when her tits stand up to anything they put into _Jugs_."

"You are such a jerk sometimes," she said softly. Charlotte's cheeks burned, seeing herself face-down in her dessert bowl with her hair spread around her head like a red fan, but she couldn't stop grinning because Dean thought she was sexy. "Half those girls have breasts bigger than my face."

"Are you questioning my expertise?" Dean returned her grin and touched her arm. "You know… We don't have to go to that concert. Your dad was supposed to be there and – "

"We're going," Charlotte snapped. It didn't matter that Charlotte's Webb had pulled out, that her daddy would probably never meet Dean the way things were going, but there was no way in hell that Dean wasn't getting backstage. "Every band you want to see is still on the bill," she added. "And my hero's going to meet his even if _I_ break a leg in two places getting him there."

"Your hero, huh?"

"Only a hero would pull my face out of a bowl of jello," she retorted.

"Yeah, I'm a real hero." Dean sucked in a breath, tangling his fingers into her hair. "I saved you from the rampaging jello monster with nothing more than a towel."

The shine in his eyes made her chest ache – his 'sometimes I think my dad's glad that I leave' rattling inside of her rib cage against Sam's 'I wish Dean didn't have to go back to school so soon.'

Charlotte Anne Webb would break her leg into pieces if it meant that Dean Winchester could spend the summer with her in a white farmhouse – and she'd shatter an arm to get Sam Winchester there.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sabotage came from the unlikeliest of places.

She expected resistance from their parents, preparing a list of rebuttals for every argument that her daddy could muster.

The Winchesters required more finesse but Chris McDonald was her secret weapon once he got over the initial shock of Charlotte's voice in his ear. _Winchesters are taught to pay their debts_, he had told her, _to say please and thank you_. The best way to thank them for Christmas was to open her home to their sons as easily as they had opened their home to her.

When it was time to ask their parents for permission, the Winchesters were thrilled about the idea and there was no way Daddy could say anything bad about Dean after the accident.

Dean was the one who threw the wooden shoe.

He didn't think she was serious, joking about her finding a new boyfriend back in Georgia and Charlotte joked back about girls lining up on the sidewalk when they realized Dean was home. It got worse when he started coming up with reasons why their parents would say 'no' – making cracks that hid the truth, that it hurt too much to think about three months where he talked about the garage and she mentioned the books she was reading.

It hurt too much to think about three months of waking up alone.

Charlotte had never been more serious about anything in her life but Dean spent most of the drive looking at her like the whole thing was a joke, an invitation that Charlotte was going to take back the minute they crossed the state line into Georgia.

He hadn't believed her about The Devil's Stump, either. Dean had laughed when she first told him the name, asking if 'turn right onto the dirt road at the goddamn stump' showed up in her Mapquest directions, but his eyes were wide when he saw the two horns sticking up into the air. Not even her daddy knew how long ago the tree had fallen – only that it had collapsed years before her grandpa was born in a white farmhouse.

She held her breath when the eaves of the house peeked over the top of the trees. Charlotte's Webb was back on "The Masters of Metal" bill the minute her daddy's doctor took off his cast but there was always the hope, getting smaller every time he mentioned how much he wanted it, that Daddy would have been there to meet Dean.

A slight figure was standing on the porch when the Impala roared to a stop next to the old tractor tire her daddy had turned into a swing. Charlotte tumbled out of the car and tripped up the porch, crying Alma's name before she had even introduced Dean. Alma was the one part of Charlotte's life that never changed, wrapped up in pink flowery dresses and the blue eyes that had watched over her the day Charlotte came home from the hospital, and Charlotte held on tight.

When she closed her eyes, Charlotte could smell magnolias.

Slow footsteps followed Charlotte up the porch and Alma pulled away to look in their direction. "So you're the boy that's going to be staying with us this summer." Alma's voice flowed like sap from a tree, as much a part of home as the garden and the broken tractor in the back field.

"Uh, yeah." Dean scratched underneath his ear before shaking Alma's hand slowly. "I'm Dean. Dean Winchester."

"Named after a rifle," Alma observed, shaking her head. "What kind of boy you get yourself hooked up with, Charlotte Anne?" Charlotte frowned when Alma's blue eyes focused on Dean's chest, searching for a secret to pluck out from underneath his t-shirt.

"A nice boy," Charlotte said, taking Dean by the hand. She squeezed her own tight, waiting for him to pull away, but he kept holding on – even when Alma stared down at their clasped hands.

"A lost boy," Alma returned. She whistled right before she smiled. "Ready for dinner?" she asked.

The scent of rabbit stew spilled out onto the porch when Alma opened the door and walked into the house. Charlotte opened her mouth to ask Dean about whether or not he had a problem with bunnies, turning on the doorstep to face him, when his mouth pursed. "Who the hell is Alma?" he whispered.

"She was my nanny when I was little."

"And now?"

"She's family."

Charlotte smiled and brushed his cheek. It was the only way she knew how to explain Alma, even though family was blood calling to blood. It was the reason why Dean would always pull that kid off of Sam. But family was more than that. It was kindred souls recognizing each other in a stranger's face, shy girls with glasses and shaggy-haired high school students who both played Risk.

"I told you all about Alma." Charlotte poked Dean in the stomach. "Lots of times."

"I know, but…" Dean's voice trailed off. "Aren't nannies supposed to be hot chicks?" He looked so serious that Charlotte laughed and hugged him to keep herself standing. "And you're _definitely_ not a kid," he whispered into her neck, dropping one kiss down beneath her ear and cupping her breasts. Dean chuckled when her nipples strained against her cotton dress, reaching for his palms.

"That boy going to help you set the table, Charlotte Anne?"

Alma was still in the kitchen when she yelled the question but they both jumped apart like she had caught them in the cookie jar.

"I haven't set a table since Sammy turned eight." He groaned. "Bad enough I'm doing chores but kiddie chores?" Dean snorted when she ignored him and started walking down the hall. "You do know you're making this up to me, right?"

"You have to catch me first," she retorted, picking up speed when her boots hit the carpet runner.

Charlotte tripped on her own shoe and flailed backwards in the archway past the pantry. Two arms came around her waist just as Alma appeared, rubbing her hands on her apron. "Caught you," Dean said. "You're just lucky I'm a hero because some guy you tricked into coming home with you just to do chores would have watched you fall flat on your ass."

She wiggled out of his arms and took him by the hand, leading him to the hutch where they kept the plates. Alma watched him throughout dinner, face cracking into a smile when Dean realized he was eating rabbit and started spluttering at Charlotte about how it was bad enough that she got him to Georgia under false pretenses – but he was drawing the line at eating stew made out of animals most kids raised for 4-H.

He was still spluttering when they unpacked the Impala and brought their bags upstairs, especially when Alma pointed to a doorway. "You're kidding, right?" Dean asked when he opened the door. He just stood there, his duffel bag thrown over his shoulder as he shook his head.

"Do I look like I'm fooling with you, Dean Winchester?"

"No, ma'am," Dean replied automatically. Alma smiled and padded down the hall, completely missing the way Dean's eyes narrowed into tiny daggers while he walked away. "Been here three hours and your _nanny_ already hates my guts," Dean muttered. "Between this and the fucking rabbit stew." He gestured through the doorway. "I'm shacking up in a goddamn girl's room. Chris would kick my ass if he saw the frills on the pillows."

"I picked out those pillow shams when I was twelve," Charlotte answered, pushing him gently into the room. She closed the door behind them. "That's the dresser that Maisey always uses when she comes to visit," Charlotte added, gesturing towards it with her head before setting her suitcase next to the bed. "But there's something we need to check before you start putting your clothes away."

"Whether or not my underwear is as pink as the walls?"

"This is serious, Dean. We need to figure out whether or not we're both going to fit on my bed." Charlotte eyed him up and down, a slow grin spreading across his face when the words registered. "You're a lot bigger than Maisey." She pulled her dress up over her head, her breath speeding up as it fell to the floor. "We might have to make…adjustments." Charlotte blushed as she kneeled on the mattress and looked at Dean over her shoulder. "We might have to _experiment_ with different posi – "

Dean already had her panties slipped around her thighs and she fisted the comforter in her hands, head falling forward with a sharp cry.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Summers were full of hazy mornings and lazy afternoons, hours Charlotte had taken for granted whenever the sun warmed her shoulders and sweat soaked her dress. Alma would rock on the front porch, humming to the breeze blowing through the trees, while Charlotte lay on her belly reading George Eliot and eating an apple.

When Dean was lying next to her on the blanket, staring up at the clouds with his hands underneath his head, the apple was as sweet as pie – wet sugar on her fingers that Dean would lick off when he thought Alma wasn't watching, shivers flickering up her arm when he pressed his lips to her palm.

It was Dean's idea to get her on the tire swing.

She hadn't used it since high school but Charlotte slipped inside like she was ten, all bare feet and braids and a grin that made him laugh when he twisted the tire; the rope coiled taut into a spring. Dean would only let go when Charlotte was high enough to kick her feet without her toes brushing the grass. She'd brace her arms against the rope and tuck in her legs, her hair flying out as she giggled.

They shucked peas together on the back porch, huge bowls of pods that they picked fresh from Alma's garden. He waggled his eyebrows whenever she traced her thumbnail against the edge of the pod, opening it up just enough to pluck raw peas out with her tongue, and Charlotte poked him in the stomach every time Dean made a crack about how she could lick his pod when they were finished.

Some days it seemed like a dream, just the two of them together in the middle of the raspberry patch – a dream caught in a metal bucket full of berries.

Dean would crush them in his fingers, leaving a smear at the pulse point underneath her ear before moving to her breasts, and suck the juice off of her until his lips were stained with it – until his fingers opened her entire body to the sky. She would line berries up on his chest, slowly nibbling down the whole line until Dean's hands were clasped behind her head and he was groaning and all she wanted was to feel his pulse deep inside her, to throw her head back while his nails dug into her hips.

And Charlotte would ride him slow, leaning down to lick sweat and sweet off of his skin, and every noise she drew from his mouth tasted like raspberries.

But when the moon turned the old pond into a mirror that reflected the stars, she knew that it was real – that Dean was all she could breathe.

They were standing next to each other on the bank, both of them in bare feet. She squished the mud between her toes, listening to the leaves rustle in the trees and the soft splash of water pouring where the old creek fed into the pond. Full moons always made her restless, wanting to feel nothing but cool water against her scars as she floated on her back and stared up at the sky.

She pulled her dress up over her head, smiling at Dean when she shimmied out of her panties and ignoring the chill in the air. He returned her grin along with her dare, throwing his clothes right on top of hers.

Charlotte dipped her toe in the water and Dean snorted in her ear, a split second warning before two hands pushed her into the pond. She tried like hell to bite back the scream as her body slammed into the water but it was cold, goose bumps spilling across her arms and her back.

Finding her footing was as easy as breathing and she tossed her hair backwards to get it out of her face. Dean popped up behind her, another splash of water against her back replaced by warm skin when he wrapped his arms around her waist. Charlotte shivered when he brushed both nipples with his palms, rough skin against smooth, and she leaned back into him with a sigh as Dean began sucking the nape of her neck.

"I love you," Charlotte said softly, reaching up to touch his cheek.

He didn't say anything, tightening his arms and pulling her into his hips – but Charlotte Anne Webb turned into a mermaid every time she closed her eyes and wished. She slid out of his grasp and underneath the water, making for the farthest bank with a kick and a turn against the low current. She could feel the water glide against scales, the stars that caught the tip of her tail when she flipped and doubled back to swim circles around Dean.

Her breath caught when the moon reflected off the droplets on his chest and in his hair, the most beautiful boy she had ever seen covered in quicksilver underneath the bright sky, but she still splashed him as she drifted past.

Dean sputtered while she dipped back underneath the water, a grin underneath the moon. He didn't start chasing her until Charlotte swam in close enough to touch his thigh. She soared just out of his reach, muscles warming up as he tried to catch her, but that had nothing to do with the slow burn through her belly when she popped up in front of him and plastered his mouth with hers. His eyes widened when Charlotte giggled and disappeared.

She resurfaced near the mouth of the creek, treading water while she waited for Dean to join her. He bought his lips down on top of hers, darting his tongue into Charlotte's mouth as quickly as the fish swimming around them, but Dean pulled back with a hiss when Charlotte's hand encircled him.

The current rolled around them both as she pressed herself against him, balancing with her arms and catching his waist with her legs. Charlotte managed to hold on enough for Dean to slip between her thighs but he fell over when he tried to thrust.

She grabbed Dean by the hand and swam to the bank, turning to kiss his mouth before she braced her hands on edge of the pond. Charlotte pushed up off the muddy bottom, feeling the scratch of grass against skin as she slid up onto the bank. Dean swallowed. Her body arched and her breasts reached up for the sky from a stray breeze that made her shiver, all legs and a small smile while she waited for him.

And when she swelled around him, Dean smelled like the earth and he pushed into her like a falling stone; a ripple as he surged against her, his tide lapping at her shore with a rhythm of sighs and whispers and a mouth that mapped the skin crinkling on her breasts. Charlotte traced the muscles down his back, moonlight flickering across his shoulders, and whispered his name as both of them shuddered against the grass – a quiet rush overshadowed by the wind through the bulrushes and a bullfrog's bugling challenge.

They rolled onto their sides and she trembled, nuzzling into Dean's shoulder. He ran a hand through her hair, staring at the wet leaves scattered across his palm like they were leeches.

"You look like one of those old fairy pictures my mom likes." Dean grinned at her. "Except those chicks are wearing flowers and skimpy ass dresses. How come _I_ get stuck with the girl covered in sticks and leaves?" A hand slid down her back, resting on the curve of her hip. "But the mud's fucking hot."

"You jerk."

The air eddied around them, bringing with it a breeze that crept underneath her skin.

"Jesus, Charlotte. You're freezing."

"Only when the wind blows," she said softly.

It didn't matter that she smelled like fish, covered in mud and leaves and goose bumps, or that she probably had grass stains on her rear end. Dean pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, and what mattered was the way he was going to take her into the house and wash everything away until all that was left was Charlotte and Dean – twisted up in cotton sheets while his heart beat underneath her fingertips and the moon glimmered through the curtains.

"Do you want to move in together?" She touched his lips. "When school starts?"

Dean didn't say anything, just stared at her before pushing her hair away from her face.

"I mean, you practically live in my dorm room." She bit her lip. "And I… I have a trust fund. I want to use it to get an apartment close to campus this year. If you were with me…" If Dean were with her, it wouldn't matter if she tripped all the time and ended up with yellow and pink stripes from her highlighters on her hands. "We could get a bigger bed and find a place with a little backyard so you can practice kick-boxing when the weather's nice and we'll never have to share a bathroom except with each other. It'll be…"

_Perfect. _

Except that she had messed up again, said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and Dean couldn't even look her in the face.

"Don't care about your trust fund," he said finally.

"I know you don't." She curled her hands around his neck, hitching up to kiss his jaw. The muscles clenched and she sank into the grass, sharp scrapes marking her back. She should have known better, throwing her daddy's money into his face all over again. "It's just that…"

_One day, Charlotte Anne, you're going to find the boy whose smile slips past that wall of yours. And when you do, you need to hold on. Hold on until your fingers ache and never let him go. _

Dean Winchester was slipping through her hands, even when he was pressing her into ground.

"And you _always_ fucking sing in the shower when I'm not screwing you." He sighed. "But I'm guessing it will make cleaning you up after spaghetti easier if we don't have to wait for washers in the laundry room." Dean's mouth brushed hers. "We are going to have our own washer and dryer, right?"

"Is that a yes?"

Charlotte started scratching lazy circles on his hips, arching her back when his mouth moved to the curve of her neck.

"That would make it too easy," Dean retorted, launching himself up off the ground. "You have to catch me first."

Water splashed as he dove into the pond, grinning at her over his shoulder when Dean's head broke the surface. She slipped off the bank, kicking as soon as she bobbed underneath the water, and soared towards him – a pale streak longing for his quicksilver touch. He didn't move when Charlotte emerged in front of him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders as she slid her arms around his waist.

"Caught you," she whispered, resting her forehead on his chest.

"You had me at 'bigger bed.' Thanks to you, I'm developing _theories_ about thrusting pressure."

Charlotte touched his cheek, everything she wanted to say trapped in her throat because Dean had her the moment she hooked his leg with her foot and he picked her up off of a cold marble floor.

But she guessed that he probably knew, the way he picked her up all over again and carried her to the shallow lip of the pond. Dean set her down on the grass like she was a precious thing, bones of glass and skin like crystal, before blowing a raspberry on her belly loud enough to scare birds out of a nearby tree.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The guitar solo ripping through the car was underscored by the tapping of Dean's thumbs on the steering wheel and his low voice rumbling out the words to "Enter Sandman." He had a dopey little grin on his face, the same one he sported backstage at "The Monsters of Metal" concert.

Dean hadn't stopped grinning since he hung up the phone two days ago, staring at the notepad with Sam's arrival time at the bus station in Savannah scrawled across the paper in the chicken scratch that passed for Dean's handwriting.

The bus driver had the storage doors open when the Impala rolled to a stop along the sidewalk, handing duffel bags and suitcases to people calling out 'mine' with outstretched hands. Sam was already standing to the side of the crowd, a duffel bag in his hand and a backpack slung over his shoulder – four inches taller than she remembered and a haircut that made girls walking by glance at him twice.

The driver's side front door slammed shut before Charlotte had unclasped her seat belt. Dean punched Sam on the shoulder and grabbed his duffel bag when Charlotte met Sam's eyes. They stared at each other for what seemed like days, the air full of apologies over phone lines and every conversation since that night, before Sam mumbled 'I'm sorry' all over again and Charlotte flung her arms around his neck.

Neither of them flinched when Charlotte kissed his cheek and they pulled back laughing when Dean told Sam to watch where his hands were moving.

Sam started talking the second Dean turned the key in the ignition – about his decision to go to Stanford for college and how he was going to join the soccer team next year because he was done with physical therapy and how he had dated Angie Delucca for two weeks until a new girl named Sally Friedman transferred to school – and Sam didn't stop until he saw the tire swing in the front yard.

His mouth hung open as he took in the porch, Alma rocking back and forth while she worked on some needlepoint.

"Not what you were expecting?" Dean asked lightly as he opened his door.

"I thought 'the farmhouse' was just a nickname." Sam shook his head sharply. "Like it was a big estate or something." He followed Dean up the steps with a bemused expression on his face.

" Charlotte grew up in Hicksville," Dean retorted. "And this is a mansion for people who like to shoot squirrels full of buckshot every day." He winked at Alma as she stood up from her chair. " Alma, this is Sammy. My little brother."

"Thank you for letting me come visit," Sam stammered, "Uh…"

"You're family, Sam-boy. Just call me Alma." She grabbed him by the hand and led him into the house. "You get to shack up in the boys' room," Alma continued, grinning at Dean over her shoulder. "The cousins use it whenever they visit."

"What the fuck," he muttered. Charlotte giggled and slipped underneath Dean's arm. "Sam's here for thirty seconds and she's already calling him family. I shucked peas for three weeks and ate crappy ass Southern food without puking before she even cracked a smile at me."

"You were family the minute you walked in the door." Charlotte squeezed his hand. " Alma would have set you up in a guest room if she didn't trust you with me." She twisted in his arms, tilting her head up to look at him. "But you were such an ass about the stew." Charlotte poked him in the stomach. "Screaming about bunnies after you ate three bowls and making gagging noises. Alma's very particular about her cooking."

"Hey… I should have…" His eyes softened. "Thanks for inviting him."

"He's my family, too, Dean."

Dean wouldn't let her go until he was good and ready, even when Alma coughed behind them in the hallway and asked who wanted to help her make ham sandwiches for lunch.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The plan for Sam's last full day in Georgia included an overnight trip to Savannah. They got up early to spend as much time in the city as they could and Alma already had her 'goodbye breakfast' waiting for them when they stumbled into the dining room – stacks of blueberry pancakes smothered in real maple syrup, scrambled eggs and enough bacon to induce a coronary in a marathon runner.

Sam had a list of every used book store in Savannah and a picnic lunch that Alma had packed for them the night before, complete with a jar of preserved plums and sweet potato pie. Three of the stores were near Savannah State University and close enough to the little hotel near the bus station where they would be staying that night.

Dean probably should have waited in the Impala. He complained about the books smelling like ass and he complained about how long Charlotte and Sam were taking in the history section, how they would linger with their fingers on the spines of the books and read interesting titles out loud to each other. When Dean started opening up books with the dumbest titles he could find and making up stories, Charlotte grabbed Dean by the wrist and dragged him to the used tape section. She pushed him towards a shelving unit with 'Heavy Metal' painted on the top.

They could still hear Dean complaining – but he walked out with a bag full of tapes for his shoe box.

Their last stop before the hotel was the Savannah State quad for lunch. Dean carried the blanket, making fun of Sam and Charlotte swinging the picnic basket between them like they were kids. Dean threw the blanket down in a patch of sunlight, shading his eyes as he grinned at them.

"I can't believe you two," he snorted as Charlotte opened the basket. "That last place smelled like someone crawled up a horse's ass and _died_ and now you're going to try and get me to eat something?" Dean sighed deeply.

"I think you'll live," Charlotte retorted, handing him a paper plate full of fried chicken.

"Can I have some of the potato salad, too?"

Dean looked so much like a kid himself that Charlotte burst out laughing when Sam passed Dean the bowl.

"So…" Charlotte nibbled on a piece of corn bread. "What's Sally like?"

Dean groaned when Sam's eyes lit up. "She's awesome," Sam said. "I met her in the library when she tried to steal my research book and we started eating lunch together after Angie dumped me. We read the same books and she's a math genius and even _Dad_ went to her piano recital over the summer." He grinned, shoveling sweet potato pie into his mouth.

"Who the hell cares about that?" Dean waved a piece of fried chicken. "Is she hot?"

"Dean!" Charlotte leaned over and popped a piece of a plum into his mouth just to keep him quiet.

It didn't work. Dean's lips lingered over her finger and the way his eyes looked her up and down made her blush, especially when he gave a little moan and swallowed the plum.

"Well… She looked really good dressed up for her piano recital." Sam scratched underneath his ear and looked away, a flush creeping up his own cheeks. "And we got caught making out in the A/V room at the library instead of watching some movies for our Shakespeare paper in English Literature class. Ended up in detention."

"That's my boy." Dean snorted. "Least I can rest easy knowing that Charlotte wasn't a good influence on you." He waggled his eyebrows at her. "I bet you were never in detention."

"I was," Charlotte shot back. "_Once_."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You're kidding me, right? You never even thought about cheating on a test."

"I was a senior in high school and we were reading _Hamlet_." Charlotte set her plate onto her lap. "Our school used an expurgated version of the play with most of the sexual references excised and I… I told the teacher that we couldn't understand the play without its sexual subtext."

"Jesus Christ!" Dean choked on a mouthful of fried chicken. "I'm screwing some dorky chick who got detention for a Mel Gibson movie."

"What about you?" Charlotte asked.

"Nope. Dad would have kicked my ass."

"So _you're_ a goody-two shoes." She and Sam smirked at each other.

"Fuck, no!" Dean's voice went up an octave and his mouth pursed like he'd just taken a swallow of sour lemonade. "Just never got caught."

Sam doubled over, laughing into his soda, and Charlotte couldn't stop giggling every time Dean stuttered his way through another comeback.

When they checked into their room that night, she was still giggling and all three of them were sunburned. Dean went out for junk food once they realized there was an on-demand movie channel. They stayed up all night, lounging around on the same bed in their pajamas as they shared Reese's Pieces and Ding Dongs and drank enough Dr. Pepper to stay awake for the next three days.

Sam found _The Goonies_ on a local channel at 4:00 AM and Dean yelled 'score' loud enough to make someone pound on the wall next door and it didn't surprise her that Sam joined in when Dean started quoting the movie, both of them imitating the voices just to see who could make Charlotte laugh the longest.

But the night didn't last long enough to keep Sam from getting onto his bus.

Charlotte promised herself that she wasn't going to cry when Sam waved at them out the window, arm frantically moving as his bus turned the corner, but she did anyway. Dean clutched her hand and waited until they couldn't even hear the metallic groan of the Greyhound's engine before he let go.

The only sound in the car was Dean's ragged breathing and Charlotte still had the white imprints of his fingers across her hand when she wrapped her arms around her stomach and watched the scenery fly past the window, just as white as Dean's knuckles around the steering wheel.

Saying goodbye to Alma that night was even harder.

She watched them pack the Impala from the porch, not even pretending to work on her needlepoint, but she acted like it was just any other day – making Dean help her cut up potatoes for soup while Charlotte set the table, humming along to the wind in the trees until Dean's knife stopped thumping rhythmically against the cutting board.

Dean sucked in a breath, staring right at Alma, and his mouth twitched.

"I'm going to miss you, too," Alma said, her voice as thick as molasses. "You're not so lost anymore, are you?" Her blue eyes scoured Dean's face.

"I hope not."

"You still feel bad about that boy you hurt." Alma sighed, setting down the ladle she used to stir the soup, and placed her hand on Dean's arm. "Sometimes you choose the war, Dean Winchester. But sometimes the war chooses you."

"But – " Dean began.

It was the answer to a question Charlotte didn't even understand and Dean's entire body relaxed. Charlotte hugged him from behind and rested her forehead on his back.

"But nothing." Charlotte could hear the set of Alma's mouth, the argument that Dean wouldn't be able to win, in the way the vowels stretched. "Sammy is family, too. Way you tell it, that bully almost killed him."

"Yes." Dean's voice was barely a whisper and Charlotte planted a kiss between his shoulder blades. He didn't see the difference between Sam being in a coma for two months and a kid who walked out of the hospital without physical therapy, even after years of his mother and his school counselor and even his own brain telling him otherwise.

"Well, seems to me you stopped before that other boy did. Seems to me that it's about time to let that guilt go."

Dean's chest rattled and Charlotte tightened her arms when he lowered his head. She didn't let go when Dean picked up the knife and started chopping potatoes. She stayed there, listening to him breathe and start humming along with Alma until the soup pot simmering on the stove was full to the rim with ingredients.

Alma finished setting the table.

Instead of spending their last night at the pond, she and Dean sat with Alma on the porch. Alma doled out moonshine in little glasses, her cheeks pink while she told stories about Charlotte when she was little – like the summer Charlotte ran naked around the farm or her sixth grade science fair project. Dean laughed when Charlotte blushed into his shoulder, her eyelids fluttering in time to the gentle sway of the swing and the creak of its metal hooks, and she fell asleep curled up next to him.

Charlotte dreamed of bulrushes and bullfrogs while the sweet scent of magnolias clung to the air, of Dean's low laugh and Alma's voice singing songs that her daddy didn't even know.

There was another 'goodbye breakfast' waiting for them when they woke up and Alma was the one who stood and watched while Charlotte twisted out the open window and waved goodbye. The sun had risen just enough to see the shine on Alma's cheeks as the Impala roared past the front gate.

* * *

A/N: 

I did my best to downplay the adult content. If more work is needed in that regard, please let me know.

Sally Friedman for the win, people! I promised that I would put her in the story if I could legitimately figure out how to do it. does happy dance

Savannah State University, unlike Georgetown, does have a master degree program in Social Work. All things being equal, this probably should have been Charlotte's primary school choice given its proximity to home but then we wouldn't have had a story. ;-P

Greyhound, for those who do not know, is a bus line within the U.S.


	4. I'm looking for a spark

**Any Chance Collision  
**

Georgetown was the next step in the plan but her daddy was always telling her that life could turn on a dime. If the trick was learning how to dance, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** The Winchester boys aren't mine but I'd make Dean wear his boots all the time if they were. 

**Overall Rating**: M (Language, Angst, Sex, Schmoop)

**Overall Pairings**: Dean/OFC (HET)

**Author's Notes**: This is a remix of _Always Falling_.

**Miscellaneous**: No spoilers for the show but this is unabashedly AU.

**Betas: ****embroiderama** and **quirkies**

* * *

_**Part Four: I'm looking for a spark  
**_

It was the ugliest apartment that Charlotte had ever seen, tucked in the back of an old house two blocks from campus.

The weeds had choked out the flowers in the small raised bed near their front door and the linoleum in the kitchen didn't match the wallpaper or the cupboards some past resident had painted lime green. Every window, even the ones in the same room, had a different pair of curtains and the entire apartment smelled like cleaning detergent for three days after they moved in – antiseptic smells and shiny spots sitting side by side with dark tracks on the carpet that no amount of steam-cleaning could erase.

But it was theirs.

They didn't argue about the old plaid sofa Dean had found in front of one of the frat houses or the bed linens she bought on sale. He laughed when she put African violets on the window sill over the sink in three small pots, just like his mother did, and kissed her neck. He couldn't stop grinning the first time Charlotte slid a plate of toast slathered in butter and strawberry jam across their rickety dining room table, ripping off a piece of toast and popping it into her mouth; he chuckled when she licked leftover jam off of the tip of his finger.

Dean didn't even say a word when she started alphabetizing their CDs, just watched her crawling around on her hands and knees with a bemused expression on his face while she moved between her scattered piles.

Each letter was part of a stack, his Metallica mixed with her Miranda Sex Garden before they ended up in the same spinning plastic tower, and Charlotte made the mistake of looking at him over her shoulder. Dean's eyes were dark and his hands were already working on his zipper, a slow metallic rip that made her face flush.

He flipped Charlotte's skirt up over her hips, kissing down a thigh until her panties were on the floor; kissing back up until Charlotte rocked backwards, squirming with each pulse beating against his lips. She couldn't keep her arms from shaking, her head flinging backwards with the push and the pull of his mouth and the way Dean split her apart with nothing but the promise of hot breath against skin – couldn't keep from moaning 'oh oh oh' as Dean thrust deep, sweat pooling between her shoulder blades. He curled his arm around her, fingers flickering faster each time Charlotte's hips bucked, and her head fell forward when the fire roared through her belly.

Dean came with a burning rush, both of them spilling out over his hand with a groan.

"Jesus," he murmured into her shoulder. "You're some kind of girl genius with this apartment idea and all." Dean's lips curved against the back of her neck. "But there's no way your crappy music is getting mixed up with mine."

"Do you want to keep all of your CDs in the shoebox?"

Her fingers flexed against the carpet as Dean sat back onto his heels, slipping past the throb with a hiss.

"That's just as much your fault as the rug burns you're going to get if you keep waving your ass at me. Who knew you could get CDs from a freaking used book store?" Dean snorted, dragging her up off the floor and actually throwing her over his shoulder. "And now that you got yourself all dirty, I'm going to have to clean you up."

Charlotte kicked her feet, giggling and twisting as he carried her to the bathroom. Dean didn't stop until he set her down in the shower stall and twisted the knob. Freezing water poured past her shoulders, wet hair plastered against her cheeks and her t-shirt. She shivered, goose bumps piling on top of themselves in places that Charlotte didn't even know existed.

"You are the world's biggest prick, Dean Winchester."

Charlotte glared at him from underneath her glasses, the shower spraying up into her face.

"I figured our clothes were dirty, too."

"You could have taken my glasses off first."

"Shit." Dean pulled them off her nose and ducked his head out from behind the shower curtain, a click on the counter before his cocky smile reappeared. Dean curled his fingers around the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her head. "Bet I can make you forgive me," he whispered, dipping his mouth to lick a stripe down her cleavage. "Got a trick or two I haven't shown you yet, Charlotte," he added, sliding her bra straps down her arms while he nipped the sensitive hollows of her neck.

Charlotte sucked in a breath when his hand brushed up underneath her skirt, twisting her fingers through his hair as the scratch of his nails left another trail of goose bumps along the track of a scar. Dean grinned up at her when Charlotte gasped, his slick fingers pushing into her core while his thumb teased between her thighs. Tremors blasted up through her abdomen when his mouth closed around the peak of her left breast.

"Do these tricks involve a housewarming party?" Charlotte managed.

Dean stood up, his hand still working as she undulated against it. "You're getting dragged into every room and fucked screaming sideways but right now, baby, you're talking to much."

The hair on her neck bristled and Charlotte shuddered, giving a sharp cry as her she convulsed around his knuckles. He breathed in every 'god' and 'fuck' and 'Dean' that tumbled out, his mouth a soft bruise against hers.

The next morning at breakfast, when she mentioned 'housewarming' and 'party' in one sentence, Dean flashed a smirk and started pushing plates and a plastic bowl full of scrambled eggs with cheese out of the way. Charlotte burst out laughing when Dean coughed, gesturing towards the table with his head. She couldn't stop, covering her mouth with both hands.

"Do you think the table can handle the weight?"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "You were actually talking about a real party?"

"No, Dean." Charlotte stood on the tips of her toes, arms around his waist as she kissed him softly. "I thought we could invite all of our imaginary friends and pretend we're eating Cheez Whiz and crackers while drinking make-believe fruit punch."

"There's going to be fruit punch at this shindig? I'll get my ass kicked ten different ways back in practice." Dean fisted her hair in his hands. "You so owe me. Making me drink goddamn fruit _punch_ in my own living room."

"Consider it payback for the nachos," she shot back.

"When were you planning on having this little get-together?"

"A couple of weeks from now. That would let us get settled into the apartment and give everyone enough time to work out any scheduling problems. I…" Charlotte swallowed when Dean let go of her hair, lowering her head, and stared at her feet. Her arms dropped, one hand picking at a loose thread on her ratty old tank top. "I already started making invitations with some of those pretty note cards Sam bought me in Savannah."

"How the hell can I say no when you already started making the invitations?" Dean sighed but there was a smile in his voice, his hands tight on her hips, and suddenly she was sitting on the edge of the table. She returned his grin when their eyes met, lifting her hips and bracing herself with her hands as he tugged down her panties. "At least there aren't fruity _concoctions_ at my housewarming party," he added, a whisper on the inside of her thigh.

The bowl tipped and cold scrambled eggs greasy with cheese spilled all over her hair before they were done but the table was still standing, no matter how it had threatened to collapse from the scratch of wood against old joints – groaning louder than either of them, her nails digging into his shoulders every time he lifted her up from the tabletop.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Southern hospitality wasn't a myth.

There were strict rules of propriety wrapped up in manners and graciousness and bringing food to families that had suffered a loss. Alma had taught Charlotte every single one of them. They would sit at the kitchen table, Charlotte crushing pecans for sweet potato pie while Alma recited the litany of 'please' and 'thank you' until Charlotte could repeat them in her sleep.

It was customary to write invitations by hand the same way that it was customary to bring a gift to a housewarming party. Dean sat across from her while she included a personal note inside each invitation and laughed when she explained to him why the rules were important. Dean was more concerned about the ink stains on her fingers from the calligraphy pen and the black streaks smudged across her cheek, threatening to drag her into their tiny yard and hose her down when he wasn't teasing her about using a bowl of water with a sponge for stamps.

Alma would have frowned at the whole thing, invitations full of polite requests asking their friends to attend without gifts, because the only thing more impolite than forgetting to bring a gift was automatically expecting one.

That didn't keep her from buying a Sony _Playstation_ for Dean.

It was on sale at the _Game Stop_ near campus, used just like everything else they had been buying for their apartment, and the stunned look on Dean's face when he pulled off the wrapping paper that morning had been worth lugging it through a rainstorm. He pushed her backwards and licked the whorls looping across her stomach, touching her like Charlotte Anne Webb had stepped out of a half shell and right onto the beach.

There was nothing that Alma could say about their wobbly table, loaded down with plates of food and a big punch bowl full of Sprite and sherbet. Maggie was on back-up duty, helping Charlotte refill plates with cheese and crackers and little rolls made out of ham and turkey and roast beef, while Dean hunkered down with Jimmy, Ruben, half of the kick-boxing team and the _Playstation_.

The doorbell rang while Charlotte was pouring more Sprite into the punch bowl.

"You want to get that?" Dean yelled at her over his shoulder, the title screen to something called _Poy Poy_ flashing on their television.

Maggie just rolled her eyes, mouthed 'boys,' and grabbed the bottle.

The doorbell rang a second time before she swung open the door.

Charlotte gasped, peering up into eyes as wide as her own. There were more crinkles around his mouth when he smiled and more gray in his hair than she remembered but he still jammed one hand into a pocket of his leather jacket while holding his guitar case in the other. Charlotte ignored the blonde woman standing at her daddy's elbow, flinging her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder.

"Missed you," Charlotte said softly, tightening her arms.

"How's my baby girl?" he asked, his free hand brushing her hair. Charlotte's hands clutched the collar of his leather jacket and the only thing keeping her standing was Dean, showing up out of nowhere to prop her up with a hand on her lower back. "That boy of yours sure has a fire inside of him, ganging up on me with Alma," Daddy added with a smile. "And I figured it was time for you to meet Elena just as much as it was time for me to meet your boy."

Dean reached around her and introduced himself with a 'pleasure to meet you, sir' that made Daddy's face light up the same way it did when Charlotte walked for the first time without her crutches. Daddy made a joke about taking care of his little girl and Dean stammered something so low in his throat that Charlotte couldn't make out the words.

Charlotte stumbled backwards, cheeks going red when Elena held Charlotte's outstretched hand in both of hers with a 'steady now.' The only thing in Elena's voice was kindness, matching the smile that reached her eyes, and Charlotte smiled back so hard that her cheeks ached.

Someone recognized Aaron Webb standing in the doorway, a shrill 'holy shit' ringing descant over the whispers and the gasps, and Daddy walked into the apartment like it was just another stage.

Elena ended up in an old rocking chair that smelled like magnolias whenever Charlotte closed her eyes and thought of Alma. Her daddy sat down in front of the rocker and he pulled out his guitar from its battered case. The breath caught in Charlotte's throat when tuning turned into strumming and Daddy was embellishing a melody until "Man of Constant Sorrow" thrummed through the room.

Daddy could make her eyes tear up just by hitting the right notes and she stood there listening to the backbeat of a thumb against the soundboard. Charlotte interlaced her fingers through Dean's, turning to kiss him, but he saw the tracks on her cheeks and yanked her behind him into the kitchen.

Dean's jaw clenched when he brushed away a tear with the pad of his thumb.

"You made my daddy visit." Charlotte swallowed.

" Alma helped. She said she'd make a good Southern boy out of me yet." He shrugged his shoulders but the skin around his eyes was too tight, another touch of his thumb to her cheek. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, wiping underneath her lenses. Dean's eyes softened when Charlotte smiled, hooking her fingers into the belt loops on his jeans and tugging him closer. Dean plucked a sigh from her mouth, clutching the back of her dress with a handful of cotton in each fist. "You're perfect," she murmured. Charlotte's fingers trembled on his lips.

"You're so fucking hinky."

But Dean was still holding her when Maggie came into the kitchen in search of more sherbet and another bottle of Sprite.

Maggie snorted and shook her head, smirking at them over her shoulder as she flounced back into the living room with a smartass crack about steering clear of the private housewarming party going on in the kitchen, but there was something in the way Maggie's voice cracked that told the truth – that home smelled like hot pot stickers dipped in spicy sauce and sounded like tires whirring down the highway in time to old songs that she would never forget and tasted like the echo of crushed raspberries and sweat on sun-warmed skin.

Home picked her up whenever she fell, whispering ' Charlotte' into her neck while her hands tightened on his hips and their bodies moved together underneath a moon bright with bulrushes and bullfrogs.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Time meandered in college, measured in semesters and class units and deadlines for internship applications while the rest of the world ran on days and weeks and months, a clock wound up on current events and two weeks of vacation a year. On campus there were concerts and kick-boxing practices, summers spent working at the_Washington__D.C.__ Children's Hospital_ or building houses as part of Habitat for Humanity, but the real world started creeping into their lives with graduation looming on the horizon.

A fire had taught Charlotte the importance of little things, how to hold on to moments that stretched into themselves by listening to the voice that sang her to sleep and counting the ticks of the blood pressure machine between notes. There was something to be said for the little things – how the blue and white pom-pom hat Dean gave her during their second Christmas perfectly matched the blue scarf that Sam had bought, neither one of them able to ask if she liked their presents with anything but their eyes, and Charlotte's chest ached just a little before she grabbed their hands and pulled them close enough to throw an arm around each of their necks.

She tucked New Year's Eve into the same place that she kept whispered conversations with Maisey when they should have been sleeping and Alma's recipe for sweet potato pie drizzled with brown sugar and stuffed with pecans – sitting on the stairs with Dean and Chris McDonald, her arms looped around Dean's shoulders as Charlotte rested her chin on the top of his head and laughed at every single one of their jokes. Mary Winchester's smile was just as familiar as the one her daddy flashed in all of his pictures and John Winchester's laugh sounded so much like his sons' that there were days where she couldn't tell you which one was laughing in the middle of _The Empire Strikes Back_.

Alma used to say that the little things were full of small lessons but the big ones, the ones most people would shy away from, had a way of hitting the folks who ignored them right between the eyes.

Dean Winchester had taught her that life was an apple, sweet like sugar and meant to be eaten whole while you licked your fingers and never stopped grinning when the juice dribbled down your chin. It was as easy as breathing to close her eyes and fall into him until all of the empty spaces overflowed with _Dean_, to believe that a little bit of hope could hold two people together – even on the days when it felt like they were falling apart.

Sometimes Charlotte wished that she could go back in time, just long enough to tell a girl who was barely eighteen that everything would work out in the end; that she would never know why a beautiful boy chose a clumsy bookworm or how a shaggy-haired high school student became her brother just by asking about Shakespeare. The 'how' and the 'why' didn't matter. It was enough just knowing that it had.

Alma had laughed, telling Charlotte over a glass of moonshine that the only way to learn a lesson was to live through it.

But Charlotte had always known that promises were important, the broken ones as much as the ones you kept.

Her daddy taught Charlotte the first part of that lesson, the crack in his voice a tell-tale sign that he was getting ready to go on tour or take someone on their Christmas vacation or that he wouldn't be home when Charlotte visited. Daddy would send presents as apologies but nothing could rub away the tarnish. Not even time could do that.

Sam Winchester taught her the second half, his voice cracking over a telephone line when he reminded her that promises were the most important thing of all.

She remembered every unspoken word because of Sam, every night that she and Dean would lay tangled in their sheets with gasps and moans and the moon fighting its way through a crack in the curtains; they had their own private vocabulary, his heart beating 'don't leave me don't leave me' and her heart answering with its gentle reply of 'I'll always stay.'

The answer to the question that he never asked.

Charlotte hadn't expected Dean to remember the first promise, an off-hand joke that she had made sitting in a tacky vinyl booth. Dean's eyes had widened and he reached for the nearest glass of water, Charlotte's stomach tumbling while she watched Dean choke down a swallow – both of them closing their eyes and jumping for the very first time.

He made her put on the nicest dress she owned, a light green dress with a swishy skirt that skimmed her knees, and he told her to wear the matching high heels even though she couldn't walk in them without hanging all over him. Charlotte put on the garter belt herself, Dean's eyes going hungry as she slid her finger up the back seam on each leg. He looked at the clock with a frown before he tied a blind-fold around her head, making a crack about how they were going to use it later before Dean led her out to the car.

Charlotte wore it while she stumbled behind him to their table. She was already laughing by the time Dean reached over and pulled it off, between the strangled noise coming out of a trumpet and the splash across her toes when someone dove off of the waterfall.

Dean ordered her the biggest Casarita on the menu.

The only way to hold it was with both hands and Charlotte was tipsy before she finished it, even with all of the tacos and the nachos and the sopapillas smothered in honey that Dean kept feeding her. Dean asked the waitress for another Casarita, not taking Charlotte's 'no' as any kind of answer, and Charlotte kicked him in the shin when he teased her about getting drunk on a goddamn fruity drink.

It wasn't her fault that Dean kept ordering drinks that were bigger than her head. He smirked when she raised her chin, daring him to catch up with her. He snorted and told Charlotte to 'bring it on' when the waitress dropped off the second Casarita.

They lurched out of _Casa Bonita_ two hours later, tripping down an alley on the way to the Impala. Charlotte grabbed Dean's wrist, staring at him from underneath her glasses with a low 'happy birthday to me,' and dragged him behind a fire escape. Dean slammed her against the wall, hiking up her skirt, and Charlotte didn't care if anyone sitting near the open windows above them could hear her groan – Dean pulsing inside her as she scratched up underneath Dean's shirt.

She held on while he rammed into her and their hips crashed together, her heels digging into his thighs while he stained her mouth with the tang of tequila and sweet margarita mix.

But the mariachi band still sucked.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Their living room smelled like Chinatown, ginger and lemongrass and egg drop soup seeping into the paint cracks while drops of sauce they were too slow to catch bloomed on an old blanket in multicolored circles around them. They weren't even using chop sticks, feeding each other whole pieces of broccoli and strips of beef when they weren't pulling off their clothes.

_Led Zeppelin II_ was playing low on the stereo, Charlotte humming along to "Whole Lotta Love" while she dunked a greasy egg roll into a Styrofoam cup full to the brim with thick sweet and sour sauce. The fried skin crackled in her hand, more grease soaking into her fingers, and Dean took a bite when she offered it to him. Sauce dribbled down to his shoulder blade and Charlotte leaned forward, licking an old scar clean before delicately bringing the egg roll to her mouth.

He sucked what was left of the sweet and sour sauce off of her fingers after she popped the last bit of the egg roll between his lips, his hands tight on her hips. Sweat pooled on the back of Charlotte's knees, resting on Dean's thighs, as she locked her elbows behind his neck. His tongue darted against hers and Charlotte sighed into his mouth.

"You still hungry?"

Dean didn't wait for her answer, brushing a pot sticker across her lips, and chuckled. The sauce burned like a low flame against her skin, peppered with red chilies. Charlotte took a small bite and spices burst inside her mouth; hot and savory mixing with pork and the slight char from the pan – every single Sunday they had ever spent alone together wrapped up in a dumpling and delivered right to their front door.

He cocked his head and swallowed the rest of the pot sticker, eyes narrowing as he chewed.

"I've been thinking about something," he said.

"I thought that smell was your burnt Mushu pancakes."

"I'm serious." Dean scratched underneath his ear. "I want to get a house."

"A house?"

"Yeah, one of those things with four walls, a roof and a backyard. Maybe even a fireplace. My boss said he'd help me find a brownstone closer to work that I could restore on my own. For the practice." Dean shook his head sharply. "But I'd understand if you – "

She leaned back on her hands, watching need and fear glimmer across his cheekbones and hearing the words that Dean wouldn't say in the way the skin tightened up his jaw line – that houses were more than just crossbeams and concrete. Old houses became homes with hope and hard work, protecting families from the wind and the rain, and the first one he was going to transform was theirs.

Her eyes smoldered and Charlotte blinked furiously, swallowing past the lump in her throat. Her hand scrabbled out across the blanket, fingers curling around the first fortune cookie she touched, cracking it open with a strangled gasp; her lungs filling up with garlic and peanut oil and Schezuan sauce as golden crumbs scattered across her thighs and her belly.

Charlotte looked down at the small slip of white paper.

"The best man you've ever known is going to give you the most beautiful home in the entire world." She sucked in a breath as the fortune fluttered to the blanket. "And he's going to drag you into every room in the house and boink you screaming sideways," she added gently, smiling when Dean's face beamed brighter than the candles around them.

"Between the sheets," Dean said, picking up the other cookie.

"What does yours say?"

Another spray of golden crumbs spilled across her thighs.

"It sucks giant green donkey dicks." Dean sighed, not even looking at his fortune before he crumpled it up and threw it over his shoulder. "You're going to end up stuck with some walking chick flick who talks too much." He dipped a finger into the sweet and sour sauce, trailing it between her breasts. "But she tastes really good when she's covered in Chinese food," Dean murmured, breath hot against goose bumps.

"Between the sheets?"

Charlotte shivered, his tongue tracing the track left by his hand.

"There's no way in Hell we're making it as far as the sheets, baby." Dean disentangled their legs, leaning in to kiss her and not stopping until she was lying flat on her back. "You're so screwed."

"God, I hope so," she breathed, body arching as his tongue mapped pale blue veins.

Charlotte knocked the Schezuan beef carton with her elbow, her body going so red that her scars were cool against the blush. Dean chuckled and steadied the carton before sitting back up. She didn't see the sweet and sour sauce container in his hand until it was too late, a drizzle across the swell of her belly that made her screech. Dean snorted, staring down at her with a shit-eating grin.

She challenged him to a duel with a Mushu pancake.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The only thing uglier than the new house was the old apartment.

It was in an older neighborhood, close to Dean's office and the city-run orphanage where Charlotte interned. They had already decided to take the rent-to-own option on the lease, making a down payment with part of her trust fund, but Dean said it would be months before all of the work it needed would be done. The draft in every room, the cracked plaster on most of the walls and the missing shingles on the roof barely scratched the surface of impending home improvement projects.

But Dean couldn't stop smiling as he walked between rooms, his hands touching the walls or knocking on a window lintel while he talked about 'her strong bones.'

And that was enough for Charlotte.

Dean coerced all of their friends into helping them organize furniture and pack boxes full of more things than two people should own a week before the movers were scheduled to pick up their things but Charlotte was the one who decided to color code the boxes by room. She kept a list of what was in every box, each page secure in a binder. Dean would laugh whenever she pushed her glasses on top of her nose, kissing the blue ink stains on her fingers, but he never told the movers where to put the boxes when she was done.

Every single one of them ended up in the living room or the foyer.

Charlotte had started unpacking the boxes that were color coded for the living room while Dean moved the rest into the foyer. Her foot snagged on a box and she tripped backwards with an 'oops,' the unmistakable crash of shattering glass muffled by the box.

_Crap!_

The only thing that kept Charlotte Anne Webb from landing flat on her rear end was Dean Winchester.

"If you try real hard, I think you can attack every box marked 'Fragile' by lunchtime," he said.

She stared up into his face, leaning backwards in his arms like they were in the middle of a dance, and he smiled like Adonis – even with his red flannel shirt covered with the remnants of something black and tarry that had been in the basement. It was his fault she had tripped, swaggering around the house in his old work boots and three days of scruff on his chin and expecting her to be able to concentrate instead of knocking him down to the floor and ripping off his clothes.

It should have been criminal for anyone moving into a house to be that beautiful after half a day of unpacking dusty boxes; Charlotte had so much dirt in her hair that she covered it up with a bandanna just to keep from looking like a chimney sweep.

"And I still think you're the world's biggest prick," she snapped, but her arms slid around his neck and her fingers tangled in his hair.

"I never hear you complaining about that when it really matters, sweetheart."

Charlotte hitched up and kissed him when Dean's hands settled on her hips, all because of his stupid smile and the way he waggled his eyebrows. He brought one hand up to touch the pulse at the base of her throat, before helping her stand. Charlotte stretched her arms, returning his smile, and suddenly she was eighteen years old; standing in front of him with her skirt piled around her feet wondering what in the hell he saw in her.

"I'm pretty lucky," she said softly. Dean's mouth quirked up and she squeezed his hand.

"You're pretty clumsy," he retorted.

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it," Charlotte shot back.

"Yeah, I guess I did."

Charlotte twisted, looking for the box cutter. If the only thing in the box had been their mismatched wine glasses, the ones they used at dinner when their parents visited, she wouldn't have cared.

The problem was the glass picture frame she had packed in the same box. Sam had given it to Charlotte on her last birthday and she had used it for her favorite picture – the one where she and Sam were sprawled on a blanket near the old tire swing back on the farm, both of them trying to read while Dean tickled one of her bare feet with an unrepentant smirk. Charlotte's book was flying in the air as she swatted at Dean with her other foot and Sam's eyes were wide because her elbow was digging into his thigh but all three of them were laughing like they were never going to stop.

"What the – "

Something small and hard bumped into her hip, the fabric of her jeans stretching tight over it. Charlotte slid her hand into her pocket, fingertips grazing a small velvet box. She started shaking before she pulled it out, staring at it while her pulse beat through her temples.

"Aren't you going to open it?" Dean asked softly.

Her head bobbed but her hands wouldn't stop twitching and the box tumbled from her fingers. Dean snorted, leaning down to pick it up, and handed it to her. Her hands were still trembling but she managed to lift the lid, her throat swelling when Charlotte saw the ring. It was beautiful – a simple antique setting with one small diamond surrounded by pearls – and all she could do was stare back at Dean with eyes as full as the ones that watched her without saying a word, a promise that she had never needed spilling into the air between them.

Charlotte sucked in a breath. "Are you sure, Dean?"

"You know, of all the answers I expected, that one wasn't even on the list."

"I was going to go with 'Are you fucking nuts?' but that seemed a little melodramatic." Charlotte smiled up at him. "Even for me."

"But it sure as hell would have made you sound like a goddamn Winchester. We're all fucking nuts."

"Your mother's not nuts."

"She chose a_Winchester_. Makes her a little twisted in my book," he retorted. Dean jammed his hands into his jeans' pockets, cocking his head and staring at her. "Do you want me or not?"

"Oh, I fucking want you."

She plucked the ring from the box and slipped it onto her finger, dropping it when she knocked Dean backwards towards the couch. Charlotte was already straddling his thighs when the box thumped onto the wooden floor.

"What if the neighbors come over to say 'hello' or 'welcome to the neighborhood' or something?" Dean demanded, voice muffled by his t-shirt before his head popped out from underneath it.

"They can wait."

"It ever occur to you that we don't have any curtains up yet?" Dean didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed the collar of her shirt and ripped it open, buttons popping off in a white spray that scattered like buck shot against the walls. "They're going to see every fucking thing we do on the way to the front door," he added, tugging her sleeves down her arms.

"They're going to be pretty jealous, aren't they?" Charlotte shot back, fingers plucking open each button down the fly of his jeans.

"Hell, yeah."

Her mouth slammed down onto his and she touched his cheeks, unable to keep her hands from quivering when Dean's fingers wrapped around her upper arms. Charlotte's bandanna slipped off, her hair falling around their faces like a red waterfall – enough sunlight peeking through the strands for Charlotte to see his face when they stopped for breath.

"Thank you for tripping me," she whispered.

Dean raised his eyebrows, quickly snapping each hook open down the front of her bra, and Charlotte waited for the snort followed by the smartass observation about emo babes and their front loaders – but he was already kissing the curve of her neck, hands pressed against her breasts as she sighed and sank into his palms.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was never going to be a traditional wedding, despite the big white tent in the backyard, and not even Mary Winchester could convince them to change their minds.

Dean was adamant that he wasn't going to wear a tuxedo and Charlotte had no intention of forcing her friends to buy dresses that they would only wear on her wedding day. They didn't want presents and the reception was going to be beer and barbecue and Charlotte's Webb playing on a makeshift stage while friends and family made toasts with Sam Adams and licked barbecue sauce off of their fingers.

Even the flowers were going to be ones from the yard, a backdrop of lilac bushes and cherry blossoms falling onto them from the trees while they recited their vows; landing on his boots and her grass-stained feet. Charlotte's throat had swelled when Dean slipped the ring onto her finger, telling the entire world that Dean Winchester was riding with Charlotte Anne Webb to the end of the highway. She threw her arms around Dean's neck and kissed him right then and there.

Once the band started playing, Charlotte couldn't stop spinning; she whirled like a dervish every time her daddy's guitar roared into his signature slide, hands raised to the sky. She dragged Jess onto the grass with her, giggling as Sam's girlfriend picked up speed along with the music and fell onto Sam's lap, and Charlotte couldn't keep the stupid grin off of her face when Sam started dancing with them – no sign of a limp in his step, just a peck on her cheek when Sam grinned back.

Watching his daughter laugh while she danced was the closest that Aaron Webb would ever come to tradition.

Alma had always said that a hostess needed to stay available for her guests but Charlotte guessed that Alma would make an exception; she wasn't letting the caterers out of her sight, arms folded while she gave quiet commands but Alma's eyes never left the lawn. Alma uncrossed her arms when Dean came up behind Charlotte and pulled her in close, both of them swaying to the music while Dean made fun of Sam and Jess danced around them.

It was as easy as the first summer in Georgia, Alma's smile washing over them like a blessing – Dean wrapped his fingers into Charlotte's skirt and pulled her up for a kiss while Sam sputtered and the music slowed down just in time for everyone to hear Dean bellowing about hot make-up sex.

It was as easy as breathing, as easy as closing her eyes and hearing the slow creak of a rocking chair on an old porch.

_One day, Charlotte Anne, you're going to find the boy whose smile slips past that wall of yours. And when you do, you need to hold on. Hold on until your fingers ache and never let him go._

Charlotte knotted her fingers in Dean's while a breeze dripping with cherry blossoms blew her braids away from her face and hauled him off of the grass. She stood up on her toes, kissing Dean's cheek.

"I've got a surprise for you," she said. "Close your eyes."

Dean rolled his eyes before he closed them, snorting when Charlotte opened the side door into the garage and the hinge gave a tell-tale squeak. "Open your eyes," she chirped, taking in the look on his face as Dean stared at the Impala; trying to figure out what she had done to his baby until Charlotte opened up the back door and slid inside.

One boot thumped onto the concrete when Charlotte crooked her finger at him.

"Didn't we already have this conversation?" His voice was muffled by the closed window. "The one about not getting fucked in the back of my car?"

"You always get that part wrong, Dean Winchester," Charlotte retorted. She smiled when his other boot slipped to the ground.

Dean whipped the door open, poking his head inside before sitting next to her. "It was about my car, Charlotte Winchester…"

His voice trailed off and they grinned at each other liked idiots, Charlotte's cheeks going red and Dean scratching underneath his ear because one word could hold the world, three tiny syllables overflowing with every secret she had always known and everything Charlotte had ever wanted the moment she collided into some boy stretching his legs out in front of him.

"I remember every time you called it a crap car. I kept a list."

"I believe the exact quote was 'you're going to have to do something pretty amazing to screw me in the back of your crap car,' actually." She laughed, reaching down and pulling her shirt up over her head.

"Wait." Dean shook his head, inching the waistband of her skirt past her calves until it pooled around her ankles. Charlotte wiggled her toes when the fabric fell out of his hands and landed behind the passenger's side of the front seat. "You're telling me that all I had to do was have some dumb ceremony for a piece of paper, and you'd screw me in the back of my car."

"Pretty simple plan on my part, wasn't it?" Her hands were moving on their own, tugging his t-shirt out of his jeans.

Dean grunted but his hands were unbuttoning the fly of his jeans; their breath keeping time with the small snaps echoing in the back of the car. He pulled down his boxer shorts along with his jeans and they landed on top of her skirt, followed by a scrap of lace masquerading as a bra that was a gift from Maggie during the impromptu bridal shower that Jess and Mary had held the night before.

His lips curved when Charlotte leaned backwards against the door, encircling the closest breast as Charlotte shivered – rolling the sensitive nub with his tongue. The damn man chuckled when she squirmed but Charlotte managed to shimmy out of her panties. She dropped them on top of their discarded clothes with a triumphant smile.

"Look at you." Dean grinned, his hips stuttering against leather when Charlotte's fingers wrapped around his length. "Lying there all sure of yourself, thinking you got your way with me." She worked her hand up and down the shaft, her tongue slipping out just enough to wet her lips as she flicked the tip with her thumb. Dean groaned when she increased the pressure, a small squeeze with the pulse rushing against her palm.

"I'm pushy," she whispered.

Dean's fingers teased her, first one and then two driving slowly in and out of the wet – the friction of skin against skin, sticky sweet musk spilling over his hand while she moaned 'please' and 'God' and 'more' and he was tormenting her with his thumb; slow circles and quick swipes and a 'fucking come for me, _Charlotte_' that had her drenching his knuckles with a scream and an arch to her back and curled toes pressed against his shoulders.

"You're pushy, too," she managed.

"You're pushy, too? That the best that you can come up with?"

"I'm a little distracted."

"God, I hope so," he retorted. Dean shifted, his knees squeaking against the leather, and he leaned down to kiss her shoulder. "Because you talk too fucking much."

"You flirt with too many girls." It came out as one long sigh, her body completely still. She slid her legs around his waist, hips rising as he sank into her, a rock leaving slow ripples that pulsed inside her belly with each flutter until she hissed and tightened her legs – heels resting on the small of his back, fingers twisting in his hair. "And I _hate_ Metallica."

"I hate _most_ of that crap you call music." Dean's voice was a whisper, mouth suckling at her breasts like she was a holy thing so close to breaking that anything louder than a breath would shatter her – anything harder than the feather-light passes of his lips and his tongue would blow her into pieces. She whimpered and their eyes met. He laughed, a low sound in his throat as the push and the pull and the slap of their bellies filled the backseat of the car; the rhythm of two bodies working in concert to the drum beat of blood rushing through veins. "And I'm just lucky you're not a freaking sex klutz," he added, his grin sparking the fire between her thighs.

"You're just lucky you were so cute I forgave you for taking me to a place where the nachos sucked."

Each syllable was clipped, a hitch in her lungs that she punctuated with a roll of her hips. His hands fisted her hair and he licked the hollows of her neck while she traced the muscles of his back, first with the pads of her fingers and then grazing with her nails when the goose bumps springing along her thighs remembered every night they spent wrapped up in their sheets.

"The nachos…really…did suck."

"But…you were really…cute."

Her hands were everywhere, fingering herself when Dean rammed hard and she was clamping around him with enough pressure to make both of them groan or tracing crinkles across her breasts when Dean slowed down and watched her moan. He would suck on her fingers when she touched his lips and suck on her breasts when her fingers left small half-moons on his shoulders and suddenly she was a firecracker – small bursts of 'oh oh oh' as her head tipped back, her body bending up into his until another wet spasm made her thighs shake and she sank back onto the leather with her arms wrapped around his neck.

"I love you," Charlotte said, a soft gasp.

"Lucky for me," Dean returned, a shaky whisper, "Because it'd fucking suck if you didn't love me back."

It was as easy as every night at the pond, the world shrinking until it was them and the earth and the ripple of water against their feet. Dean's cheeks were red, a flush to match her own, and she pushed down on the small of his back with her heels. He could still pluck tiny little moans out of her whenever her hips bucked up into his and she could still make him smile, loose and comfortable, when she whispered that he was the best thing to ever happen to a shy girl from Georgia and that older brothers were sexy and that she was always his between breaths.

They started shuddering together, a loose-limbed jumble of urgency and desire. Dean swallowed her scream as she came, pouring into her with an 'oh _fuck_, baby' that left white fingerprints on her hips.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dean opened the side door after one brisk knock echoed throughout the garage.

Sam's startled face watched them walk onto the concrete path, taking in Charlotte's lopsided braids with their halo of frizzy hair and Dean buttoning up his fly with a grin that Dean made no attempt to hide. There was no way to hide the musk and the salt soaked into their skin, both of them full with the taste of each other, and nothing could hide the mark Dean's lips had sucked into the crook of her neck – a red kiss that claimed every square inch of Charlotte Anne _Winchester_ as his own.

"Holy shit." Sam's eyes avoided her neck, staring at their bare feet.

"She's my wife, dude."

Charlotte's entire body was on fire.

"Yeah, well…" Sam's voice trailed off. "Dad was looking for you." He shook his head with a low chuckle. "You're going to be screwed when he finds out his wedding night speech was too late."

"His wedding night speech was too late the first time I got Charlotte back to her dorm room." Dean snorted. "You'd be amazed what a girl will do after you've subjected her to Chiquita the Angry Gorilla and the world's crappiest nachos." He started walked towards the white tent. "I bet Jess _loves_ mariachi bands," Dean yelled over his shoulder.

A stray breeze cooled her cheeks and Charlotte sighed.

"Your left braid's falling apart," Sam observed.

"Thanks." She reached up and flipped off the tie, smiling wryly at Sam. "Your big brother is a doofus," Charlotte said, fingers moving slowly as she intertwined shanks of hair around each other. They started following the path between the rose bushes, the long way around to the stage.

"You're the masochist that married him."

Charlotte giggled and Sam bumped into her, draping his arm across her shoulders. She leaned into him when they stopped walking and Sam pulled her into the hug. He rested his head on top of hers and she wrinkled her nose, wishing that she could have hauled Dean into the shower before anyone had found them, but it was Sam. He had seen her scars and he made chocolate chip cookies with her every Christmas and Charlotte couldn't hide from him any more than she could hide from Dean.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I just wanted you to know that…" Charlotte swallowed, sucking in a breath when Sam's arm tightened around her. "If I could pick anyone in the world to be my brother, it would always be you."

Sam opened his mouth like he was going to say something, staring down at her with eyes that glittered and a clench to his jaw that said he was a Winchester, but someone was tapping into a microphone on the stage. It thumped through the speakers, followed up by her daddy's chuckle and a joke about how her man wasn't keeping a good eye on his daughter if she was already lost.

Dean was laughing when Charlotte and Sam emerged from the rose bushes, smiling back at her daddy while John slapped Dean on the back. She slipped away from Sam after squeezing his hand and tripped across the yard towards Dean, hitching up to kiss Dean on the mouth when he wrapped his arms around her waist.

"Found her," Dean managed when Charlotte's heels sank back to the grass.

And he wasn't letting her go.

Charlotte twisted in his arms to face the stage, her back fitting against his chest like they had been made for each other – sculpted from the same block of clay and fired until they gleamed. She reached up and touched his cheek, the scruff tickling her fingers as Ray, Dave and Jared left the stage. Her daddy was still there, sitting on a stool while he spoke into the microphone.

"So here's where I'm supposed to stop playing and do that dance with my baby girl." His drawl was as sweet as syrup, working the crowd with a story, and he didn't need anything but his acoustic guitar and his voice to keep them mesmerized. " Alma's even threatened to come up here and sing 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls' if I don't get off my ass and sashay out on the grass." Daddy snorted, a random chord slipping out from between his fingers and the pick.

"But have you seen Charlie dance? Much as I love her and as proud as I am, it's a life and death proposition." Another strum that ended in a different chord made the whole backyard laugh, Dean's chuckle tickling the back of her neck, and Daddy's grin only got wider as he leaned conspiratorially towards the audience. "And for all that Alma's been making noises, she only said 'hell no' when I said she should take a turn of her own."

The music was getting louder, a whisper that danced with the soft smack of a thumb against wood.

"If she were still alive, Charlie's mama would be the one dancing with her – but I don't dance and Alma's the one who taught Charlie how to sing." Daddy's body was straight despite the weight pressing down on his shoulders, the ghost of a woman long dead carved in the lines around his eyes, but his mouth quirked up suddenly and he winked at Charlotte. "So we're doing this thing my way, baby girl."

The melody burst into the air and the voice that crooned Charlotte to sleep on warm summer nights told them all how Daddy's little girl painted the world with her magic wand – her bedtime story and her lullaby and his apology, ripe with a promise that even the soft rain that had started falling from the sky would never break.

_When I come home, __Charlotte__ smiles with the dawn  
__Charlotte__ smiles, and she radiates the glow around her halo_

She lowered her head, braids falling forward, and Dean's voice rumbled through her back when he tucked one behind her ear.

"You're standing there getting all emo, aren't you?" His chuckle shivered up her spine. "He wrote that goddamn song when you were four. You don't think that's enough time to come up with some new material?"

"Do I even want to know where you're going with this?" Charlotte turned in his arms, eyes narrowing as she looked up into his face. "Because I don't have a problem serenading you awake from a dead sleep every morning if you're making fun of the song my daddy wrote for me."

"That whole 'nothing's wrong when Charlotte smiles' thing is fucking obvious," Dean said. "I'm pretty sure the man knows how much you drool since he was around when you were still burping on people." He shook his head, grinning at her.

"What?"

Dean's mouth twitched and he took a breath.

"When I wake up, Charlotte's snoring in the bedroom," he sang, waggling his eyebrows when Charlotte's mouth opened and abruptly shut. " Charlotte's snoring, and she drools into my armpit – "

Charlotte poked him in the stomach and he grabbed her hand by the wrist.

"I married a five-year-old."

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, baby." He tried to kiss her palm but ended up cackling instead, letting go of her hand. "What about a verse where you're screaming my name and I'm _boinking_ you? Just thinking about _boinking_ makes me want to do you right here." Dean's hands slid to her rear end, pulling her in close. "And I bet any song with 'boink' in the title is going straight to number one."

She snorted, getting ready to tell him that "Charlotte Boinks" didn't scan properly, but Dean leaned down to kiss the curve of her mouth and the only thing that mattered was the way his lips brushed against hers with the rain sprinkling gently onto their shoulders.

They were still kissing, Charlotte standing on the tips of her toes while Dean held her tight to his hips, when a streak of lightning cracked through the sky – unleashing a downpour that fried one of the speakers with an electrical squeal. Sam and John helped her daddy and the rest of the band cover what was left of the working equipment while Alma organized another round of beer and barbecue under the big white tent.

"Got a surprise for you," Dean said.

He dragged Charlotte to the back door, looking around furtively before throwing her over his shoulder. Dean carried her over the threshold through the kitchen and kicked the door shut behind him. Charlotte giggled, kicking her legs as Dean stumbled up the stairs and dropped her onto the bed – and then they were stripping off wet clothes, licking off the rain and kissing goose bumps and the rush of blood underneath their skin resonated with 'don't leave me don't leave me I'll always stay if you never leave me.'

When they came back outside an hour later, sporting new clothes and wild hair, it had stopped raining. Sam laughed when he saw them and their parents looked up from their beer with grins on their faces while Jess and Jimmy danced to a boom box blasting music that made Alma grimace. Maggie hugged Charlotte from behind, resting her chin on Charlotte's shoulder and announcing that it was time to cut the cake before the happy couple decided to run off again and have sex.

Charlotte was still bright red when Dean smashed his piece of cake into her mouth.

* * *

A/N: 

I did my best to downplay the adult content in this section but if more work is needed in that regard so as not to abuse the rating, please let me know and I will be happy to correct it.

_Poy Poy_ is an awesome PS1 game. Each player is a grade school kid and the purpose of the game is to beat each other up – using anything on the playing field. I know of no other game where you can pick up a T-Rex (if you can time it correctly) and chuck it at another player. You can also throw boulders, shoot them with rockets and pick up other players and just smash them into the ground. I suck at it…

I should have noted before that Charlotte has this annoying habit of thinking in song lyrics and "that a little bit of hope could hold two people together despite every ache that lay buried deep inside them" was shamelessly stolen from Kate Bush's "Love and Anger."

"Charlotte Smiles" is actually a direct rip of the song "Molly Smiles" by Jesse Spencer from the _Uptown Girls_ soundtrack. (Yes, I watched the movie.) I really loved the song lyrics and they are exactly what I envisioned as part of a song that Aaron would have written about Charlotte when she was a little girl.

I used the word "knuckles" in this one, too. Be very afraid.


	5. And I light up in the dark

**Any Chance Collision  
**

Georgetown was the next step in the plan but her daddy was always telling her that life could turn on a dime. If the trick was learning how to dance, she had really screwed it up by tripping over that boy who bussed tables in the New South Dorm cafeteria.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** The Winchester boys aren't mine but I'd make Dean wear his boots all the time if they were.

**Overall Rating**: M (Language, Angst, Sex, Schmoop)

**Overall Pairings**: Dean/OFC (HET)

**Author's Notes**: This is a remix of _Always Falling_.

**Miscellaneous**: No spoilers for the show but this is unabashedly AU.

**Betas: ****embroiderama** and **quirkies**

* * *

_**Part Five: And I light up in the dark  
**_

Charlotte smelled the lasagna before she had even unlocked the front door.

Kansas was blaring from the kitchen and Dean's head poked out just as Tippy barked and scampered down the hall to greet her, dancing around her feet while she locked the door and set her keys on the small table in the hall. Dean snorted and shook his head when Charlotte leaned down to pick him up, the old joke about teaching their new dog bad tricks shimmering across his face until their eyes met.

She didn't even want to _think_ about eating lasagna.

"Shit. You okay?"

She shook her head, holding Tippy close to the chest, and shuffled into the living room. She was tired, feeling the ache in her muscles and in the throb at the base of her skull. Charlotte kicked off her shoes and cranked up Front 242 before curling up on the couch, letting the music beat right along with her pulse and wash over her, but Charlotte couldn't forget the way a little girl named Ellie Jenkins held onto her like she was never letting Charlotte go.

And she couldn't forget the pictures of the crime scene, Ellie's little unconscious body coiled on top of her mother – whole and unharmed but covered in blood because some trick had used a shard of glass from a broken mirror instead of leaving some cash on the nightstand. Ellie was standing with a police officer in front of a flea-bag motel featuring cheap weekly rates when Charlotte made the pick up. The smell coming off of Ellie's clothes made Charlotte's eyes water, saliva still pooling in her mouth at the memory; exhaustion warring with the urge to run for the nearest bathroom.

She swallowed and closed her eyes.

Ginny Jenkins would have been twenty in two months.

The music dimmed until it wasn't even sound, just a vibration thumping through her skin, and the other side of the couch dipped down from Dean's weight. He was frowning at her when Charlotte opened her eyes, Tippy scrambling across the cushions to lick Dean's hand.

"What happened, baby?"

"I spent…" Charlotte exhaled and Tippy curled up behind her knees after she turned to rest her head on Dean's chest. Dean's hand stroked her arm and Charlotte sucked in a breath. "I spent all morning watching a little girl rock back and forth on a hospital bed because some bastard decided to fillet her mama."

"God…"

Dean's muscles tensed like a spring getting ready to unfurl.

"I know." Another breath shuddered out of her with a hiccup. "Jenna says that I can't save them all – that I need to be more objective. But how…" Charlotte closed her eyes, flayed skin and a little girl's tiny braids capped with white beads burned across the back of her eyelids. "She's going to get lost in the system. It'll be hard enough finding someone willing to foster her."

She couldn't even tell him the worst part.

Ginny Jenkins' bled to death from wounds that should have been all over her body based on the force and direction of the cuts but Ginny's skin was just as whole and unharmed as her daughter's wherever Ellie's body had touched. It was like Ellie had thrown herself across her mama, a six-year-old shield.

Some brain trust had said the wrong thing in front of one of the other kids, about how Ginny Jenkins had been killed and how Ellie Jenkins couldn't have survived the attack the way that she had. When Ellie walked in front of Charlotte through the play room, the other kids parted before her like Moses parting the Red Sea – whispering the same old stories about Bloody Mary that Charlotte first heard when she was ten but there was something in the hush that the girls weren't saying. Ellie held her head high until they reached the hallway, bursting into tears and wrapping her arms around Charlotte's waist.

_I don't want to be a Special One_, she had whispered into Charlotte's belly.

It was the secret that only girls would tell each other. The boys wanted to fight in death on the side of the angels but it was a girl who could stare down Bloody Mary – one girl in every thousand, so strong and so good that Bloody Mary couldn't tempt her with promises of drugs or drag her down the road to sex and despair. If Bloody Mary faced one of those girls, it was Bloody Mary who ran scared.

There were no such things as demons, no such things as Bloody Mary or angels that danced in neon lights. It was a fairy tale wrapped in survivor's guilt; a story conjured by a little girl to explain to herself why her mother died and she could still breathe, throwing herself between Bloody Mary and the mirror because her mother was one of the bad girls.

Ellie's eyes were dark when she lifted her face to Charlotte's, reminding her of the ones that stared back at her when a nurse held up a mirror and told Charlotte how lucky she was that the fire hadn't burned her face, and all Charlotte could do was stroke Ellie's hair while she cried.

"We can save one."

"But what about _Mackey and_ _Winchester__ Restorations_?"

"What about it?"

"I thought we were going to wait until…" Her voice trailed off when Dean shrugged. Charlotte sat up, curling her legs underneath her as Tippy jumped off the couch with a small bark, and touched Dean's cheek. He looked just as tired as she felt, dark circles around his eyes from getting up at 4:00 AM to arrive at the job site before the crew did at sunrise. "Are you serious, Dean?"

"Hell, yeah." He snorted, shaking his head with a grin. "We're doing better this year than I thought we would, got some new business coming in because of Mack's references." Dean shut his mouth abruptly when their eyes met, taking a deep sigh. He swallowed. "Besides, what's going to happen to that kid if we don't help her?"

"I don't know. We can't help every little girl like this but – "

The idea alone broke every rule that Charlotte had been taught about getting personally involved with a client, the textbook trap that every new social worker fell into the first time circumstance built a personal connection. Charlotte dropped her hand to Dean's jeans, poking her finger through a hole on his thigh; it was enough to feel her skin against his, even if it was just the wiry hair on his thigh and the pad of her index finger.

"But what?" Dean sucked in a breath. "You worried about that kid I beat up?"

"No!" Charlotte tilted her head up to look at him. "If we do this, we'll have to go through the entire adoption process just like everyone else. They'll find out about that during the initial background check." His eyes shone, cheeks going stiff as his jaw tightened. "You were sixteen, Dean. I don't think going to Georgetown and starting your own business are signs that you're going to be a bad father." She poked him in the belly, just hard enough for him to shake his head and smirk. "And all those weekends you volunteer for Habitat for Humanity aren't going to be viewed as a strike against you, either."

"I'm a bone fide Good Samaritan." Dean chuckled. "So, what's the problem?"

"It just that… Ellie's scarred where it hurts the most." Charlotte hand was back on his jeans, scratching lazy circles through the denim as she listened to him breathe. "The other kids are talking about it like she's a miracle. Her mama's dead and she's not and every story she'll make up for herself won't change that. It's a lot of guilt to carry when you're six." She didn't realize she was crying until Dean touched her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "Jesus, I _am_ a walking chick flick," Charlotte added.

"Yeah," he returned lightly. "But I'm going to let you off just this once."

"Because you're the world's biggest goober."

"Is that any way to treat the man whose been slaving over a hot stove for you?" Dean stood up when the timer erupted with a buzz in the kitchen. "You're just freaking lucky I didn't have to wear an apron."

"It's Stouffer's lasagna. Your manly image is saved."

"Until you bring teddy bears to the site so I can pick out which one to give the little squirt." He grinned at her over his shoulder. "You got about forty minutes for your bath."

Charlotte smiled when Tippy followed Dean into the kitchen with a little yip of a bark and hopped off the couch, turning off the stereo before heading upstairs. A bath wouldn't keep her from seeing the crime scene photos when she leaned back and closed her eyes and the water jets massaging her back wouldn't do anything for the ache in her chest when she thought of Ellie Jenkins. She wished they had a swimming pool instead so that she could push against the water, feeling the burn in her muscles until she was too tired to think.

The water poured into the tub and Charlotte added some bath salts, something that Jess always sent Charlotte from her favorite store in Palo Alto. She was pinning her hair up into a loose bun when Dean walked into the bathroom. He leaned against the counter, staring at her while Charlotte slipped out of her work clothes and stepped out of the business suit piled around her feet.

Dean tapped a round pink case against his thigh and Charlotte's eyes widened when she recognized it. He raised his eyebrows when their eyes met.

"Kid might want a brother or a sister," Dean said softly.

She nodded, reaching over and taking the pill case from his hand. There wasn't a sound in the room – not even their breathing or the whir of the air conditioner or Tippy's nails clicking on the marble tiles – when they watched the case tumble into the wastebasket.

Dean started pulling off his clothes when Charlotte shut the cabinet door, its sharp bang echoing through the bathroom. She didn't let him get far, snapping open the button on his jeans and running a finger down the zipper. He could still make her blush, leaning down to whisper about filling her up and how _fucking _sexy she was going to be with his baby growing inside her belly. He slipped his hands between her thighs, teasing her with his fingers and a 'show me how you like that, baby.'

Charlotte stumbled backwards into the tub, both of them laughing when Dean caught her.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The cracks in the walls had been fixed and painted over with a cheery blue paint that Jimmy said made the yellow curtains and matching bedspread pop; Charlotte had smiled when he said it and Dean had snorted at the idea of choosing any color to make something yellow 'pop' – all that mattered to him was the fact that Ellie had picked out the color when they showed her paint chips, one hand behind her back when she looked up at them and asked if blue would be okay.

It still smelled like fresh paint, the lingering remnants of the classic Winnie the Pooh mural Dean had paid one of his contractors to paint for Ellie above her bed, and Charlotte had to step carefully through the Barbie town that Dean had built against the far wall in order to open up the window.

Dean had actually blushed when Charlotte laughed at him, watching him pull box after box out of plastic bags, and made a crack about Sam being the expert in the family since getting that Sapphire Barbie as part of a secret Santa gift exchange at school; all _he_ had to go on was the name 'Barbie' on the box and he didn't want the little squirt to be disappointed by him getting the wrong things.

Given all the Nerf toys that were crammed into the yellow and green toy box, Barbie was going to be well-armed in her fight against the stuffed animals piled on Ellie's new bed. Dean had even bought _them_ Nerf guns, cackling when he put his together and pumped it long enough to launch a foam rocket across the living room at her; Charlotte stooped down and kissed him on the top of his head when Dean told her it was just so that they could play with Ellie.

They had survived four and a half months of paperwork, house inspections, background checks, interviews with friends and family, supervised interaction sessions and psychological evaluations for all three of them – but it was over.

Ellie was coming home.

Charlotte smiled, brushing her fingers against the ruffle on Ellie's new pillow sham. She thought Dean's face was going to crack in two when they had both told Ellie that she could choose whatever last name she wanted, even if it was a completely new one that was just hers, and Ellie had bellowed 'Winchester' with a lift to her chin.

"Charlotte," Dean roared from their bedroom. "Get your _ass_ in here!"

She shook her head and turned on her heel.

Dean was rubbing his hair with a towel when she stepped into the room, his clothes laid out on their old rocking chair and his boots tucked underneath the seat. Even his boxer shorts were folded, resting on top of his clothes.

"I mean it, woman!" His voice was muffled by the towel. "You don't even want to know what I'm going to do to you."

"_Woman_?" Charlotte snorted when Dean jumped, returning his grin when the towel dropped to the floor. "Exactly what were you going to do to me?"

"For starters?" He pulled her in close, hands slipping down to her rear-end. "I'd buy you sexier clothes." His breath was hot on her neck when he tugged open the belt at her waist, pushing the terrycloth robe off her shoulders. "I'm surprised this thing doesn't have holes in it by now."

His skin was still wet from the shower, muscles smooth underneath her fingertips, and Charlotte tilted her head up just in time for Dean's mouth to crash down on top of hers. She took a breath when his hands gripped her shoulders, waiting for him to push her backwards onto the bed like he had done most nights for four and a half months – an endurance test of different positions and basal temperatures and Dean's mouth touching every square inch of her body until she was warm and wet and wanting.

"Better get dressed," Dean said. "We're going out."

"What?"

"It's the last time we can go out without worrying about the little squirt. You upset because you're not getting some?"

"I'm relieved," Charlotte retorted. "I should be as bowlegged as you are by now."

"Cute." He gestured his head towards a white pile of fabric sitting on the low dresser. "There's your stuff."

The first thing she picked up was a white bustier, soft satin and the scratch of lace vying with the cool metal clasps that trailed up the back. Underneath the bustier was a garter belt, nylons and the strapless white dress that Dean caught her looking at in a store window downtown. It was something Charlotte would never have bought for herself, not without a shawl to wear that she could drape over her arms or a shrug with mid-length sleeves, but Dean never saw what other people did – and that could still make her throat ache.

Charlotte lowered her head when his footsteps crossed the floor.

"Jesus, do I have to do everything by myself?" But his voice was soft when Dean gently tugged the bustier out of her hand, mouth dipping down to her shoulder. "Lift up your arms, baby," he whispered.

Fabric touched skin, her hips swaying backwards into his. Dean started at the bottom, closing each clasp while he swept his tongue across the skin underneath her left ear. He moved his hands slowly up her side, cupping her breasts. One hand trailed down to her belly, his thumb rubbing slowly across the whorls, before it slid between her thighs; Charlotte's hips were already rocking, goose bumps rising until she groaned and grabbed his thighs to keep from falling.

Charlotte twisted in his arms, standing on her toes to kiss him with her hands around his neck. Her nails scratched lightly underneath the edges of his wet hair before her fingers followed the muscles across his shoulders, hands digging into his biceps as she took a deep breath and pushed him backwards.

The mattress bounced when Dean collided with it. Charlotte cut off his 'holy shit' with the swirl of her tongue. She spread his thighs wide, licking down the line where his leg met his hip. He sucked in a breath when brought her lips up to his beating pulse before taking him full in her mouth. Her head bobbed in time with each throb. He tangled his fingers up in her hair and she only slowed down when his hips started to buck.

He pulled her off with a groan.

"Fuck."

She crawled up his body, kissing up his abdomen and his chest, until her mouth met his. "I thought you'd never ask," she murmured against his lips.

Charlotte slowly lowered herself inch by slow inch, biting her lip as she throbbed around him, and hooked her feet behind his knees. He leaned up on one elbow, tongue grazing her breasts through the lace, and chuckled when she gasped. His thumb flickered with slow circles that made her toes curl in time to the heat pulsating out from her belly, and she rocked against him with a whimper – shuddering where skin met salt.

"Fuck," she managed.

"I thought you'd never ask."

And suddenly Dean's hands were tight on her hips, his pelvis rocking up and thrusting into the wet every time Charlotte lifted her hips and sank back down. All she could hear was the slap of skin against skin, nothing more than a scream and one long spasm until Dean arched his back with a groan; her pulse pounded around him as she threw back her head, her muscles loosening as she fell forward.

Fingertips brushed the sweat off the small of her back and Charlotte shivered, her forehead resting on his chest.

"Looks like girls do it on cue after all," Dean said lightly, hitching up to swallow her laugh.

The doorbell rang twice and Charlotte pulled back, narrowing her eyes and poking Dean in the stomach. "You ordered Chinese food."

"Why go out when you can stay in?"

He rolled her over before she could say anything, slipping out with a hiss. The doorbell rang two more times in quick succession, followed by an insistent knock on the front door. Dean hopped out of the bedroom pulling on his boxer shorts, bellowing 'just a minute' as he tromped down the stairs.

She smiled and shook her head when Dean started yelling about getting her _bowlegged_ ass into the living room.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Charlotte dragged Maggie to the drug store with her when they were supposed to be meeting for lunch.

Bringing her best friend with her had been a mistake, no matter how much Charlotte needed the moral support. Maggie had burst out laughing when Charlotte stopped in the aisle, raising her eyebrow as Charlotte began grabbing tests off the shelf and reading every word printed on the boxes. She checked accuracy percentages and the test read-outs and she almost smacked Maggie at the suggestion that Charlotte should pick out the test based on the color of the box.

She was still laughing when Charlotte tossed three different tests into her basket but Maggie called her about the test results right before Charlotte was getting ready to go pick Ellie up from daycare, whooping in Charlotte's ear because there were two lines and plus signs where there should have been two lines and plus signs. She asked Charlotte how she was going to tell Dean that he had spawned before joking about Charlotte scheduling a doctor's appointment just to have the answer confirmed with a blood test before she did anything about it.

Charlotte had already called her doctor's office but she wasn't about to tell that to Maggie. A baby wasn't something left to chance, no matter the statistics that over-the-counter pregnancy tests spouted during their commercials. Charlotte stopped by the drug store on the way home from work to buy a bottle of pre-natal vitamins, replacing her regular ones in her pill case before hiding them the back of her t-shirt drawer, but she was going to wait until after her blood test came back positive to tell Dean.

And, when it did come back positive, there was the problem of finding the perfect way to do it.

Yelling that she was pregnant while the world's worst mariachi band massacred "La Cucaracha" wasn't how Charlotte envisioned the moment, all those kids yelling while Dean shoveled tacos into his mouth with the broken bits of his shells. She wanted to see Dean's eyes widen as a grin crept slowly across his face – wanted to hear his voice drop to a murmur while a flush crept slowly across her cheeks – but there was no way in hell that the man who wore jeans to his own wedding was setting foot into any of the places that Maggie had recommended.

The best that Charlotte was going to come up with on short notice was their monthly date night. They already had a dinner reservation at one of Dean's favorite restaurants – a little Italian place downtown that served the best gnocchi in the DC area – and Dean had coerced Vic into watching Ellie play _Hello Kitty Cube Frenzy_ on the Playstation in exchange for Dean's help with his fireplace.

The whole thing was surprisingly fool-proof, requiring the help of a waiter with a bottle of sparkling cider and one quick trip to the store for the card to go along with it.

There was a bark on the other side of the door as Charlotte turned the lock, Tippy dancing at her feet just like he always did. She bent down to scratch underneath his chin. He followed her into the living room, where Dean and Ellie were curled up on the couch reading _Winnie the Pooh_. She stood in the archway listening to Dean's voice squeak and growl and stretch itself out while he read, watching him make faces and imitate the voices until he was chuckling as hard as Ellie was.

They both looked up when Charlotte laughed. Ellie flew off the couch, throwing her arms around Charlotte's waist with a giggle. Dean stood up, scratching underneath his ear. His mouth was open like he was going to say something but the doorbell rang and Vic bundled them out the door after they said goodbye to Ellie, both of them stooping to kiss her.

"You better have a good time," Ellie warned, waggling her finger.

Dean was still laughing when they walked to the Metrorail station, bodies so close to each other that their shoulders were touching, and the air was thick with the scent of flowers intermingled with the summer shower that was threatening to fall from the moody clouds overhead. Even when they were standing on the empty platform waiting for the train, the moisture in the air dragged out curls until her hair was laying flat on her shoulders. Dean caught her looking at her reflection in one of the movie posters on the wall.

"You're looking pretty snazzy for an old married woman in that dress of yours," Dean said. "You planning on seducing me with spaghetti and meatballs?"

"The fastest way into your pants is through your stomach," Charlotte retorted. It wouldn't be long before she was waddling through their living room wearing the biggest pair of sweatpants she owned, hoping she had enough time to make it to the bathroom without tripping over the Nerf guns Dean and Ellie left all over the floor – and it was his fault that she had never worn the dress in the first place. "Maybe I just wanted to remind you that I'm not an old married woman," she added.

"Polyester is fucking sexy." Dean grinned.

Charlotte glared at him over the edge of her glasses, frowning when he launched into his impression of Charlotte deciding between a walker and a cane. By the time the wind rushed through the tunnel, followed by the screech of the train coming to a halt at the station, Dean was cackling about how Charlotte would be bringing her walker with her the next time that she went out dancing at Jimmy's club and how he was going to sit on the sidelines and make bets with all the waitresses about how many people Charlotte could take out with it.

Her mouth twitched when the doors opened but laughing outright would only have encouraged him. They stepped inside, making their way to the nearest seats through stale air full of a sweet perfume and the aftermath of cigarette smoke. The only other passengers in the car were an elderly woman going home with her groceries and two teenagers making out at the far end of the car, with ripped jeans and tattered shirts and body piercings designed to make people stare. Dean elbowed Charlotte in the side and gestured his head in their direction.

"Want to give them a run for their money?"

He didn't even wait for an answer, grabbing her collar and hitching Charlotte's mouth up to his. By the time they both pulled back with a gasp, Charlotte was sitting on his lap with her elbows locked around his neck and Dean's hands were knotted in her hair. The old woman was gone and the teenagers were staring at them. Dean smirked in their direction while Charlotte chuckled into his shoulder.

"You sure as hell don't kiss like an old married woman."

"I was hoping some old married man would make a pass at me on the subway." She smiled up at him.

"God, I…" Dean swallowed.

"I know," Charlotte whispered, her fingers touching the corner of his mouth.

The car lurched to a stop and an electronic voice announced their station.

"Have a good night, kids," Dean said on his way out the door. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Charlotte slipped her hand into his, standing on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek. "What a nice way to tell them to boink on their first date, Dean."

"You must be rubbing me the right way because I'm turning into a classy guy." Dean dragged her behind him to the station gate. A blonde man ran past them as they exited out onto the street and into the sprinkling rain, bumping into Dean and knocking him backwards. "Watch where you're going," he yelled over his shoulder, patting his pockets. "At least the asshole didn't take anything," he muttered. Charlotte snorted and Dean rolled his eyes. "What?" he demanded.

"You're so classy I think I'm going to swoon."

Dean made a noise deep in his throat and Charlotte was still giggling when they turned left at Excelsior, another wave of flowers fighting its way through the rain in the air as Charlotte squeezed his hand. Her eyes focused on _Giorgio's_ neon lights blinking through the trees, its cold fluorescent spark reflecting off of the wet leaves, but the line of people waiting outside the restaurant couldn't wipe the smile off of Charlotte's face. She stood next to Dean with one hand wrapped up in his and the other laid flat on her belly, the palm across her abdomen protecting her secret until it was time to be shared.

The sign flickered with the zap of a mosquito trap, a flash that caught Charlotte off-guard. Her legs buckled out from underneath her as she fell backwards, a crack echoing through her head as it bounced onto the pavement.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She was in the library, body soaring to the ground after she hooked her foot on a crack, the rip and the salt clamping around her spine as she fell. She didn't remember the skidding and the screaming and nothing but dead air below her waist. She didn't remember seeing stars when she looked up at the ceiling or the way Dean's eyes shimmered when he looked down at her, helping her sit up with her book bag twisted around her shoulder.

And she didn't remember the ache in her belly – an embarrassed ache that made her flush, her hands dripping wet with it and staining her fingers with a crimson sheen until she let them flutter back down to her belly.

"Dean." Even his name hurt, something in her lungs tearing apart while he watched. "I think I tripped."

She blinked, cherry blossoms falling onto her face and lilacs smelling so strong she was drenched in them – wrapped up in sheets while the moon made her skin glow, the slow drum of his heartbeat singing 'don't leave me don't leave me' underneath her fingertips. She could see a little girl's smile capped with white beads and a laughing red-haired baby with hazel eyes and gangly legs running towards her with a limp that made her chest break open, could touch the cold rain sprinkling all over her as she whirled with a laugh.

She had legs once.

She remembered dancing while she was sinking through white fire, incandescent as her arms opened and she closed her eyes; the final jump where nothing else mattered but sliding into the water, of drifting out to the cool where the burn in her lungs would wash away in the salt on her tongue; dripping down her cheek and onto the marble of the library floor.

"Charlotte," Dean whispered. "Just hang on."

Her eyes opened with a snap, the press of his hands against hers, but it wasn't his voice that she remembered making the warning. It was _hers_, just as cool a balm as water – with its slow wooden creak and the rub of thread being pushed through cloth while the sun winked on the metal edge of an embroidery hoop and ice cubes clinked against the sides of her glass as she swirled her lemonade and listened.

_One day, Charlotte Anne, you're going to find the boy whose smile slips past that wall of yours. And when you do, you need to hold on. Hold on until your fingers ache and never let him go._

She was running out of chances to bring the smile back, lost in the gasp that sliced through her when he whispered '_please_' with everything he was in it – a tear-stained voice full of everything that made it worth getting up off of the cold marble floor and walking outside with him into the parking lot, braids swinging off her shoulders.

But her fingers were going numb along with her lungs, needles piercing through sucking gasps every time she heard a breath.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"We couldn't save the baby."

It was a brisk voice that she didn't recognize, its antiseptic tang making her stomach twist in on itself; a doctor's voice, weary and blood-stained, accompanied by the unsteady rhythm of machines. A tattered breath, shattered glass in her lungs, bubbled thick around her mouth and someone was wiping her lips gently – someone who smelled like talcum powder, the sweet perfume of a nurse.

Her belly was on fire, the pain blossoming through her chest when she heard his intake of breath; one sharp draw taking in the stitches across her abdomen, nothing more than dead weight sinking into the lumpy mattress. There was one sob so ragged that it should have left scars – just one – before the hand around her own tightened, rough calluses against her palm as the scents of oak and pine fought with sterile ammonia and a rusty tang that no amount of disinfectant could mask.

_Dean._

She hadn't told him about the baby.

It was supposed to be a surprise, a split second of normal – the last thing she remembered with any clarity before the thunder roared through her. He would have laughed and called her a dork but that wouldn't have kept him from smiling when he opened up the Father's Day card, cracking a joke about how the kid was going to inherit his musical taste because there was no way in hell he was letting her loose with a music collection that sucked ass.

"Charlotte," he whispered but she didn't answer. She was too tired to open her eyes, couldn't even squeeze his hand to let him know that she had heard him – couldn't even tell him that his voice was the chain that kept her from floating out of herself when she soared backwards, hitting the ground with a crack from a nightmare, and all she wanted to do was glide into the black so that the ache spreading through her chest would stop.

But his hands had pressed down on hers, held her spilling heart inside, amidst the screams and the lights and the rush in her veins that kept getting softer every time she tried to move her lungs.

_Just hang on._

Dean held her hand, one thumb pressing into her palm before he began stroking along her life line. He didn't have to say anything but Charlotte heard him all the same, the 'don't leave me' that hummed through her – the 'I'll always stay if you never leave me' that was bigger than any promise they had made underneath a big white tent in their backyard.

They were both falling, farther and faster than they had ever fallen before, and Charlotte had to hold on because there was no other way to keep the line from snapping.

If Dean fell, Sam would rise.

If Dean fell –

The cool cloth at her lips kept wiping but the talcum powder turned the air sour. The nurse laughed, breath as rancid as her perfume, and Charlotte's eyes fluttered open in time to see the flicker of orange down the nurse's cheekbones; her smile showed teeth, ready to consume Dean with nothing more than a sigh and a glance from her orange eyes.

She made a clucking sound in the back of her throat, sharp staccato bursts against the white walls. "Can't save Sammy from the choice he has to make. Can't even keep Sam from drifting farther away each day the closer he gets to the Ascension. Left Ellie behind with those bastards who shot Charlie full of rock salt because she's only six and who knows what'll happen if the Circle finds either of them." The nurse smirked. "You cannot even save your broken red-haired girl in a dream."

Dean squared his shoulders and let go of Charlotte's hand. It lay there like a dead bird, fingers bent to the ceiling.

"Fuck you," he spat.

"_She_ does not even know about the little passion plays you create every night. Do you think she will stay once she realizes you are nothing more than an empty shell dreaming wishes that turn into nightmares?" The nurse smiled again, orange sigils sprouting on her cheeks and down her arms. "The _baby_ was a nice touch."

Dean didn't say anything, eyes hard as he stared at the wall, but his fists clenched in his lap.

_I'm always Called for him. Twice in one day. And he thinks he's not important. But he is. The most important thing._

"I'm not a dream," Charlotte whispered. The nurse stopped wiping Charlotte's mouth, clutching the moist towel with a hand clenched so tightly that her knuckles went white and blood stained the cracks. "It's me, Dean. I'm right here."

She sat up, another ache blooming through her abdomen when the stitches ripping open were replaced by a soft blue glow. Charlotte couldn't fight like a Winchester and she would never bleed like one but dreams were emotions made manifest – and that _thing_ had forgotten that they weren't just ants sitting around waiting to be stepped on, that there were other weapons besides the sword it would use to break the world.

Charlotte reached for Dean, her hand wrapping around his and holding on tight. The light screeched against the back of her eyelids when their hands touched, the ripped tatters of herself bursting apart at the seams. He blew through her, ruptured into a little boy and a fire and the baby in his arms; caught between gossamer strands while the demon howled and the antiseptic room shattered.

Holding on to him was the reason that she was made.

It was time to wake up.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Charlotte pushed up from the bed in a cold sweat, the quilted comforter falling down to her hips, and the cool breeze from the ceiling fan made her shiver. She couldn't keep her arms from shaking, staring down into her pillow while her hair fell around her face. Dean's ragged breath stripped her bare, a clumsy girl who loved to dance – a girl with a funny little snore who always used a pen for her crossword puzzles, a girl with braids she wanted him to tuck back behind her ears every time they fell forward.

A girl with the same tire swing in her front yard and a pom-pom hat she used to wear in high school.

She shook her head sharply and reached across him to flick on the small lamp near the bed. The party was still going strong, Sam's laugh mingling with Ellen's throaty chuckle and a whoop that could only have been Ash. Dean's jaw tightened when Creedence filtered its way through the cracks between them, the one song that he'd crank up in the car when they were driving so that they could both bellow about meeting each other by a big red tree. He would always grin up at her in the rear view mirror but the only thing he was staring at in their room was the ceiling.

**_She_**_ does not even know about the little passion plays you create every night._

"How…" Charlotte swallowed. "How long have you been having those dreams?"

"Since Madison," he said.

"Every night?" The words slipped past the ache in Charlotte's throat. Dean's only answer was silence, his eyes finally focusing on her face. They were separated by the life they would never have, memories of mothers and fathers and the lazy warmth of a summer in Georgia given to him as easily as Azazeal called fire. Charlotte's hand trembled on his cheek when Dean sucked in a breath, nostrils full of sour talcum, and her eyes burned. "Oh, God…"

Dean shrugged like a monster hadn't been ripping him apart, tempting him with promises they could never make – but, even in his dreams, Dean hadn't changed a thing about her. She still had scars and she still sang off-key and he still pulled her down with him in a tangle of arms and legs, saving a drowning girl simply by picking her up off the ground and wrapping her in a wish so strong that it should have been more than a dream.

And Charlotte had slept through the whole damn thing.

She rolled onto her side, leaning her head on one hand, and watched him.

"So much for being a hero," Dean said finally, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed. The muscles in his lower back twitched when her fingertips lightly brushed across it.

"So much for being an empath," Charlotte retorted, trying to cross two feet and another lifetime – dropping her hand when Dean pushed off the mattress and walked away. "I'm so sorry, Dean."

His hands were hard fists, resting at his sides. "You should be," he muttered as a dart of anger shot her in the chest, a bull's-eye beating inside of her rib cage with every clench of Dean's white knuckles. He flexed his fingers and looked down at her over his shoulder. "Parading around inside my head like it's your own personal playground."

Charlotte's head snapped backwards, her eyes narrowing when she raised her chin. "You're the one who pulled me into it!"

Dean snorted. "It's not my fault that you didn't like what you saw."

Another dart hit her stomach when he reached down and started picking up his clothes, beating through Charlotte's belly as it left more scars in its wake. She couldn't even talk, his name turning into a strangled noise inside of her throat. Dean jammed his feet into his boots, oblivious to the pillow she whipped in his direction until it smacked into his chest and dropped to the floor.

"What the hell!"

"I don't believe you. You're just walking away like nothing happened."

"Sam's the Winchester who sits around and wallows." Dean's nostrils flared. "Go ahead and root around through my brain if you want to know how I really _feel_." He turned on his heel, whipping open the door and slamming it behind him.

Even her toes were numb as Charlotte sat up and listened to Dean's boots echo down the hall. Charlotte pulled everything she could back inside, wrapping herself up in gossamer until the only ache she could feel was her own – the phantom girl who would not move and did not breathe because being invisible hurt less than being noticed.

But Charlotte stood up when Metallica started blaring through the Roadhouse, drowning out the whir of the ceiling fan, and she opened herself just enough to see the dark-haired girl mouth 'get the hell away from me' and 'you're crazy' before whipping a book right at Dean's chest. It dropped to the floor, his eyes just as full as they had been when they were watching Charlotte's pillow, and he shut the door behind him without looking back.

Charlotte's legs were heavy as she slipped on her underwear, arms like lead as she tucked her shirt into the waistband of her skirt and tugged on the nearest sweater. Stiff fingers pushed wooden buttons through holes before tying the belt at her waist. Charlotte twisted her hair into a knot, put on her glasses and stared at her reflection in the mirror – the old pale face and thin-lipped frown that looked back at her every morning before Sam Winchester pushed her into the back of his older brother's car.

It might have been better for all of them if she had just kept running.

Sam had saved her life but Dean was the reason that Charlotte wasn't that girl anymore, the one who would have been happy hiding underneath a rock and waiting for the world to end – between his jokes about fighting gargoyles so that she could start small by saving a cow and the way he'd touch her belly, whispering about her war wounds in a low voice full of more pride than she ever deserved while his callused fingers made circles across her scars. Dean was the one who wouldn't let Charlotte leave.

There was no way in hell that she was going to let Dean Winchester turn things around so that it was her jackrabbit heart's fault.

She barreled down the steps, picking up speed past the landing, and burst into the hallway next to the bar. Charlotte collided into Sam, a tangle of arms as she smacked her forehead on his chest. He didn't let her go, wrapping her shaking body in his arms and resting one hand on the back of Charlotte's head. She was the one who pushed herself away, taking one step backwards and raising her chin to look up into Sam's face.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"You both need time…"

"I can find him myself if I have to." Charlotte didn't recognize her voice, the way it cracked every time her shoulders hitched.

Sam eyes widened. "He's playing pool." He frowned, staring down at her feet. "But you don't want to go out there without your – "

"Thank you, Sam."

Charlotte stepped past him, padding through a throng of bodies before sidling up to the jukebox. She was used to the looks and the glances, the way laughs went hard when she walked by a table full of men playing poker and sharpening their knives between hands. There was nothing inside of them that she wanted to feel but the stray flashes were enough, uneasy whispers that brushed against the back of her skull. Leah was standing next to the jukebox with her staff, cold eyes watching Charlotte's finger as it trailed down the glass, and her lips curved into a smile when "Bad Company" blasted its way through the Roadhouse.

She heard Dean's voice before she saw him, hunched over a pool table with the stick poking out behind his hip. A brittle joke rang out through the room as he lined up his shot, quirking his mouth at a gruff-looking man in a baseball cap, but Dean's smirk couldn't hide the shimmer in his eyes or the way they darkened when Charlotte stepped from the shadows and curled her fingers over the edge of the pool table. The felt against her fingertips was worn from years of hunters coming through _Harvelle's Roadhouse_, old losses blacked out by the crack of balls for the length of time it took to swallow shots of tequila.

There was a half-empty bottle and a shot glass sitting next to her elbow. Dean didn't say anything when Charlotte picked up the bottle and poured herself a glass, kicking it back with a trembling hand before slapping it upside down on the table. A gunshot roared through her head, a crimson chrysanthemum blooming across her chest as her body flew backwards and skidded across the sidewalk

"What do you want, Charlotte?" Dean leaned against his pool stick, rolling his eyes. Charlotte opened her mouth, shutting it abruptly when he snorted. "It was just a goddamn dream."

"If it was just a goddamn dream," she snapped, "then why are you still calling me 'Charlotte' instead of using one of your stupid nicknames?"

"Because it's your name," he managed through clenched teeth. Charlotte lurched around the pool table, steadying herself with one hand and the help of the man in the baseball cap. The man shot Dean a frown but Dean snapped his shoulders back and cocked his head, grinning down at her with a smirk when Charlotte grabbed Dean's t-shirt. "How many times do I have to tell you that I can take a scrawny chick, _Charlie_?"

She dragged his mouth down to hers and the way he'd whisper against her skin, hot breath leaving goose bumps as he licked sweet and sour sauce off of her belly, bubbled up past the salty tang of blood spilling between them. Her broken body flashed across the back of her eyelids – a puppet with its strings cut, hooked up to machines in a tangle of wires and plastic tubes – but Dean tasted like raspberries and he smelled like the sky after a summer storm and the scratch of grass on her back was as solid as the edge of the pool table against her hip, as solid as Dean's hands tightening on her arms.

Dean ripped himself away, pushing her backwards until Charlotte's heels rested on the floor – 'just leave me' pouring through her in the wake of his stare. His twisted mouth slashed her open all over again, a knife splitting her apart with one easy push between her ribs.

Charlotte touched his lips with burning fingertips, looking up into the glittering stones where his eyes used to be; the little girl on her crutches watching the little boy with a baby in his arms, two children with nowhere left to hide.

"Coward," she hissed.

His eyes narrowed. "The fuck?"

"Did I _stutter_?" Charlotte lifted her chin. "You're the Winchester who swaggers around behind a fake name and a smile." Her throat constricted but that didn't stop the words coming out in a swollen rush. She wrapped her arms around her belly, ignoring the buzz prickling the hair at the back of her neck. "If you say too much, you can blame your tequila. And if you want too much, you just turn up Metallica and drown out your breathing."

A muscle jerked in Dean's cheek, his lips straightening into a thin line and his nostrils flaring while he glared at her. Sam's head swam over Dean's shoulders, with eyes as full as his brother's and a frown that knew Charlotte Anne Webb wasn't anyone's prize – with her jackrabbit heart and a face more pinched than pretty.

She started running the second Dean opened his mouth, knocking into Jo and bursting through the front door of the Roadhouse with a crash of glass behind her.

It was raining harder outside than she remembered when Dean dragged her away from the party and up the stairs to their tiny guest room, the thunder and the lightning and the rain on the roof setting up a rhythm that Dean matched when she sprawled underneath him – tongue pushing up into her as she bucked against his face and his low voice rumbled in her belly, telling her how sexy she was every time she blushed.

And she had just broken it all to hell.

"You happy with your little floor show?"

Charlotte looked up, shaking her head sharply. John Winchester was leaning against the wall, between the window buzzing with neon lights and the front door. His Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, eyes just like his sons' focusing on her face with a grimace.

"You're in a war, girl. Not a soap opera." He tossed a shot glass onto the ground, alcohol and shards pooling around his boot. "The only reason I let you stay is because my boys trust you – but if you don't stop screwing Dean up with your mind games, I don't have a problem kicking you out on your ass and letting you fend for yourself." John cocked his head. "A little thing like you won't last long."

Her bare feet slapped against the mud as she scurried into the storm.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The rain on her lenses refracted the stars peeking through the clouds like a prism but that didn't keep Charlotte from tracking lines between the points of light, laying on her back in the wet grass and searching for one pattern in the jumble. Trying to find Cassiopeia made as much sense as staying as long as she had, no matter that Sam needed her and she needed his brother. None of that changed the truth of what was coming, the clouds gathering around Sam like old crows stalking a battlefield.

One clumsy girl from Connecticut acting like a twelve-year-old was a liability none of them could afford – even Ellie was preparing for what was coming, two months shy of seven and learning how to use her Gifts. All Charlotte had done since they reached the Roadhouse was translate a couple verses of a prophecy, get drunk with Jo Harvelle and spend as many hours as she could with Dean Winchester; collecting every smile and every brush of his fingers on her skin, his chest full of knots that she couldn't pick apart.

She was nothing more than the backseat passenger on the road trip to Armageddon, watching Dean get stretched thinner every single day because some thing born before time was carving out pieces of his baby brother; watching Sam become as hollow as the hopelessness in his good eye every time Sam looked into the mirror and saw the bloodshot mess bought in one skirmish with the other side, surrounded by bruises that swelled around his cheek and his brow bone.

They were all living on borrowed time.

And there were no happy endings waiting in the thunder and lightning on the horizon.

Not even in their dreams.

Charlotte heard the snort along with footsteps shuffling through the grass towards her and a dark shape appeared in her peripheral vision, sitting down next to where she was laying. Her eyes flicked up, the light from the stars bright enough to make out his jaw line, and he sighed.

Dean was one long ache, his sharp edges going soft but not quite dull when she dropped her hand next to his thigh. The buzz at the base of her skull sped up and, even flat on her back, Charlotte was turning head over heels – spinning between the hope of an apology and the fear of lost chances, both of them tangled together in a net that was dragging them into the deep.

"You're a weird-ass chick, you know that?" He leaned back on his hands to stare up at the sky. "You don't even have the common decency to run back upstairs when it's fucking raining outside. What the hell are you doing flat on your back in the rain, anyway?"

"Looking for Cassiopeia."

She rolled over onto her stomach, tucking her knees underneath her skirt and wiping the rain off of her glasses with the edge of her sweater. Charlotte's hair had fallen out of its knot, plastered to her face and neck in wet strings, and Dean's mouth twitched when their eyes met.

"You _look_ like a scrawny little chihuahua."

"I am not scrawny," Charlotte replied automatically. She pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose and glared at him over the top of the lenses. They both laughed but it didn't loosen the iron band encircling her chest. "Sam…" She shook her head sharply, trying to keep her voice light. "Sam made you come out and apologize, didn't he?"

"Nope." Dean's voice was just as light but he scrubbed his knuckles down his cheek. "Ellen got pissed when I smashed that bottle of tequila on the floor and told me to go outside and cool off. Would've been out here sooner but Jo made me clean it up. Sam told me I deserved it for being such a jackass."

"Only because I was being a stubborn bitch." Charlotte frowned, putting her hand on top of his. "Your dad was right about me." He opened his mouth when she mentioned his father, eyes darkening, but he didn't pull away when she tucked her trembling fingers between his. "You're supposed to be fighting demons and protecting Sam," she added. "You're not supposed to be fighting with the clumsy ingénue on _As the Demons Burn_."

Charlotte swallowed, damping down the flicker that licked up her arm and down her belly when she said it – memory mixed-up with the heat and the humidity and the hiss of water striking hot metal. Dean shivered as her white nightgown burned to ash and the fire blazed across her thighs, another shared secret as real as children that would never be born and the houses that Dean would never build.

"So what are you saying?"

The iron band constricted when Dean looked down at their hands, her heart thumping inside her rib cage as her legs twitched. He looked as young then as Sam – as young as he had looked when he dripped spicy sauce onto her shoulder and licked it off with a smile, his mouth following the slick trail past her clavicle with a butterfly's touch and a soft 'baby' that still made her shiver.

"There's a lot more at stake than the two of us living happily ever after."

"You're preaching to the choir, Charlie. We both know that I'm not making it to the end." He choked on a sound that might have been 'fuck' when Charlotte looked away, a thick noise that made her shoulders hitch, but he never let go of her hand. "And there's nothing that's going to change that," Dean added.

Charlotte picked at her skirt with her free hand, working the wet fabric through her fingers as she searched for a loose thread or a dangling spangle or an open seam – trying to find _something_ that she could use as a focus because lifting her head just enough to see his face through the veil of her hair wasn't going to stop the buzzing in the back of her head. It wasn't going to stop the words flickering on the tip of her tongue, waiting to pour out as soon as their eyes met.

"Except that we're stronger together than when we're apart."

Dean stared at her like Charlotte Anne Webb had just started speaking Etruscan before he yanked on her arm and pulled her on his lap. Her forehead cracked against his chin with a 'shit' when Dean moved backwards to lay on the ground and Charlotte slipped to the wet grass with a 'crap' as she landed on her side.

He was still working his jaw when she rested her head on his shoulder.

"You're going to take me out before that thing squirming around in Sam's belly even has a chance to get me."

"That thing squirming around in Sam's belly has been tearing you up inside since Georgia," Charlotte retorted, clipped syllables pushing past the ache in her throat. "It gives you the world every night and then crushes it like an empty eggshell just to see how long it takes before you shatter." Her breath came out in a huff and Charlotte raised herself on an elbow to touch his face. "If Shemhezai wants another piece of you, it's coming through me."

"I'm not worth the trouble, baby. Can't even keep you safe in my own head."

Charlotte dropped back down to her side and curled around him, feeling his heart beat underneath her fingertips as they both stared up into the sky. The rain slowed to a drizzle but thick clouds still rolled across the stars, random points of light blinking down at them.

There would never be a little girl with her hair and his eyes or New Year's Eve parties in Chris McDonald's living room or warm summer days stretched out underneath the sky in the middle of a raspberry patch. But there were still days when Sam would lean up against the window in the front seat of the Impala and watch the scenery go by with a stupid grin on his face and nights when Ellie would climb onto Charlotte's lap and rest her head on Charlotte's shoulder while they both whispered nursery rhymes together.

And there was still Dean, filling her up to overflowing with the 'don't leave me don't leave me' thrumming underneath her palm.

"I don't want safe," she said softly. "I just want you."

The burn crept up her cheeks when Dean chuckled, twisting onto his side to grin at her, but it was impossible not to return his smile; resting her fingers on his lips when the iron band finally snapped and the smile reached his eyes.

"You're so fucking emo." It ended with a cackle. "And you know _jack_ about constellations. The best time to see Cassiopeia is in November." Dean grabbed her hand when she poked him in the stomach. "That's seven months from now," he continued, rubbing her palm with his thumb. "You're just lucky that I'm sticking around with a goddamn walking chick flick long enough to show her where to find it."

"What are you going to show her in December?"

Dean snorted, rolling Charlotte onto her back, and clutched the grass along with the hair spread around her head like a fan – but he whispered 'Aries' when she wrapped her arms around his neck and started kissing up his jaw line.

_ Fin_

* * *

A/N:

I did my best to downplay the adult content. If more work is required, please let me know.

The title of this piece is a song lyric from "I Have the Touch" by Peter Gabriel. Likewise, each of the chapter titles are also lyrics from the same song. I did toy with using "Always Falling: The Apology" for about thirty seconds before giving in to the Gabriel. Interesting side note: "I Have the Touch" is also the title of the chapter in which Charlotte is introduced in Strange Angels. I am, sadly, a sucker for symmetry.

This story would not have been possible without katelennon.

Seriously. My original idea for a sequel was going to be some dorky thing based on "The Five Times Dean Sang Zeppelin and the One Time He Didn't." This silly masterpiece culminated in the final scene which was my apology for Always Falling, where Charlotte wakes up in the hospital after having a very bad dream about a world full of demons and the adventures she had there with Winchester boys.

The world should bow to Kate for saving them from the horribly schmoopy scene where Dean sang "Crazy Love" to his wife while she lay in a coma by asking me one simple question: Why wasn't Shemhezai torturing Charlotte in her dreams? She wanted to know how Charlotte's "world without demons" would differ from the one Dean created. Would she still have scars? Would she still be shy? Would she sing?

My muse, sad to say, ran roughshod over Kate's idea in the end but it is my hope that she likes it all the same.

The stories that I allude to in Charlotte's flashback to working at the homeless shelter are based on the ones in the Myths over Miami article. The stories themselves are absolutely fascinating to me and I go back and read the article at least once a year. Although the primary inspiration for the Beata in Strange Angels is the Book of Enoch from the Apocrypha, there's a lot of imagery I used for the manifestation of their powers – the blue glow, for example, and the idea of people coming back as Spirit Guardians – that I borrowed from the article. And, for the record, the part about the Blue Lady who teaches the kids songs to protect them is directly from the stories themselves. It just seemed to fit in well with Charlotte and her inability to sing.

Ellie Jenkins, for the curious, was a character I created based on the kids I read about in the article.

I made the conscious decision to include more of Sam in this story than I did in _Always Falling_. That is partially due to the relationship that Sam and Charlotte have in the main 'verse but also because I am horribly self-indulgent when it comes to writing Teen!Sam. I even added Sally Friedman to the story, as Sam/Sally is one of my guilty pleasures.

I did add a bit more of the "Myths over Miami" back story in the final chapter. I think the concept of the "Special One" applies to Ellie Jenkins within the context of this story and it added a nod to _Supernatural_ that the story hasn't always shown. I did take some liberties with it – since the myths do mention that Special Ones die if attacked by Bloody Mary, but that they will die good.

Adoptions can take any length of time – some within twenty four hours, others within eighteen months. I opted for a short time frame based in part on Charlotte's job but also the situation itself. Ellie would have been classified as a "special circumstances" adoption given the murder of her mother and its potential impact on her but she also had a set of parents willing to adopt her. So I went with four and a half months.

wenchpixie is the brilliant person who came up with the idea of Dean reading stories and acting out all of the voices when I first introduced Ellie into the 'verse. I always intended to write it in the "main" storyline but it never quite worked out, especially given the fact that they're leaving Ellie behind at the Roadhouse, so I included it in this story instead.

For those who are curious, the dark-haired girl is how Charlotte sees Cassie in Dean's eyes. He had never told Charlotte her name, so she can only use a descriptive phrase to describe Cassie.

In the original story, Always Falling, the scene with Dean and Shemhezai was much longer – including a statement of "you are lucky that I did not let you know about the baby." I made that scene much shorter but thought it was a good addition to Charlotte's version of the story because it's a yearning that they both would share.

I thought the reference to Etruscan was appropriate given that the "real world" Charlotte is one thesis away from finishing her doctorate in Linguistics – especially given her focus on ancient languages. For those who do not know, Etruscan is something of a linguistic enigma – only one book written in the language has survived and it is now unreadable – and was replaced by Latin completely in 100 AD. There's some fascinating research out there if you're into language studies.

I wish I could say that I'm an expert at constellations but I researched them, too.

And lastly, though by no means least, thanks to all who stuck around for the ride on this one!


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